The announcement was made at a press conference on Wednesday morning, where MishMash was one of six centres granted this status.
The centre which was jointly launched by the University of Oslo (UiO) and the University of Agder (UiA), initially founded as a collaborative effort between UiA’s Centre for Excellence in Education, CreaTeME, and UiO's RITMO Centre. MishMash has now evolved into a comprehensive partnership and will be led by UiO, with support from the University of Bergen (UiB), the Norwegian Academy of Music and UiA.
Professor Daniel Nordgård from UiA will serve as deputy director of the centre.
"We are very proud. This is something we have worked hard for and built up over time," says Nordgård.
"This gives us great opportunities to further establish UiA in the field of artificial intelligence, and in the use of new technology in arts and the creative sector," Nordgård adds.
Participating in centre focused on human learning
UiA is also a participant in another of the six national AI centres.
Professor Cathrine Tømte is involved with the AI Centre for the Empowerment of Human Learning, which is led by UiB.
The centre aims to develop new models for human-AI interaction and learning, exploring 'hybrid intelligence', meaning mutually beneficial learning for humans and machines, according to the Research Council's website.
Applications span education and training broadly, encompassing new learning systems for schools, workplaces and society in general.
Continued AI collaboration in public sector
UiA hosts another centre that that made it to the "finale" to achieve national AI status.
Although the Centre for Public Sector Artificial Intelligence (SOSKI) was not selected as one of the Research Council’s national centres for AI research, collaboration among partners will continue.
"Unfortunately, SOSKI was not on the list presented, but the work continues nonetheless," says Professor Morten Goodwin.
Goodwin is the deputy director of SOSKI and leads the planned research activities.
"There are many solid plans to position the public sector at the forefront of artificial intelligence development. Now, the leadership team will convene to chart a future course for collaboration," he adds.
Background
In 2024, the Research Council announced the opportunity to become a national research centre for artificial intelligence. The total budget was set at NOK 850 million, distributed among four to six centres.
The applications from SOSKI and MishMash were among 19 that advanced to the final round out of a total of 122 preliminary proposals, which were evaluated by an international expert panel.