ICAIN

International Computation and AI Network

Rebalancing the Global AI Landscape

Our Mission

ICAIN aims at advancing the UN sustainable development goals via AI.

We leverage experts' knowledge and broaden access to the world's foremost supercomputing resources to develop AI models that benefit society worldwide.

Harnesses Global Supercomputing for Sustainability

Advances UN Sustainable Development Goals via AI

Promotes Inclusive AI Research and Education

Democratizes Global AI Technology Access

ICAIN Values

Equity

ICAIN broadens global AI technology access

Sustainability

ICAIN harnesses global supercomputing for sustainability

Safety

ICAIN anticipates and mitigates potential AI risks

About

Problem

The high concentration of computing resources as well as human and technical capabilities limits the enormous positive impact of AI on both sustainable economic growth and scientific progress and creates substantial risks.

What ICAIN does - Iterative growth, early impact, lasting network.

ICAIN is currently establishing its organizational structure through an iterative process that evolves with the needs of its members and partners. Since 2024, pilot projects have been launched to generate early impact, test new approaches, and capture learnings that directly inform the setup. These activities ensure that ICAIN grows on a solid foundation of practical experience and collaboration. By the end of 2025, the network aims to be fully operational, enabling sustained impact across its priority areas.

Strategic Mission Areas (Pilot Phase)

The projects are structured around three strategic mission areas and are intended to be scaled up over time. Each area is designed to be mutually reinforcing, building synergies across domains while strengthening local capacity with a long-term perspective:

Climate & Agriculture

Developing AI solutions for crop disease detection, improved weather prediction, and sustainable farming practices to enhance food security and climate resilience.

Health & Humanitarian

Advancing AI applications aligned with international humanitarian law, including medical AI tools adapted for low-resource settings and for use in crisis response.

Education & Capacity Building

Building human capital through training programs, joint masterclasses, and summer schools that equip the next generation of AI talent with the skills to apply AI responsibly and for the common good.

We promote equitable distribution of technological benefits to empower communities across all regions of the globe.
We leverage global AI advancements to optimize resource utilization and enhance efficiency in technology usage.
We foster knowledge sharing and advancements in AI research and education.

Governing Board

Prof. Dr. Serge Belongie

Director, Pioneer Centre for Artificial Intelligence (P1)

Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen (DIKU)

ELLIS President

Serge Belongie is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen and head of the Pioneer Centre for AI. Previously, he was the Andrew H. and Ann R. Tisch Professor of Computer Science at Cornell Tech where he also served as Associate Dean. He has also been a member of the Visiting Faculty program at Google. He is known for his contributions to the fields of computer vision and machine learning, specifically object recognition and image segmentation, and he has co-founded several startups in those areas. He also serves as a board member of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS).

Recent interests include research using language and visions models toward the development of technology that will allow everyday Internet users to protect themselves from misinformation.

Prof. Dr. Stéphanie P. Lacour

Vice-President for support to Strategic Initiatives (VPS), EPFL

Neuro-X Institute, Laboratory for Soft Bioelectronic Interfaces (LSBI)

Stéphanie P. Lacour is full professor at the School of Engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering from INSA de Lyon, France, and completed postdoctoral research at Princeton University (USA) and the University of Cambridge (UK). She joined EPFL in 2011. She was the founding director of EPFL Neuro X institute – a new interschool department focused on interdisciplinary and translational neuro-research located at EPFL-associated campus – Campus Biotech in Geneva. Since 2025, she is EPFL Vice-President for support to Strategic Initiatives.

Dr. Damien Lecarpentier

Director, International Collaborations & Partnerships, CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd.

Damien Lecarpentier has held various positions at CSC Finland related to international collaboration in the area of advanced computing, data management and e-Infrastructure developments.

Prof. Dr. Ciira wa Maina

Associate Professor Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, Nyeri, Kenya

Board Chair Data Science Africa

Ciira Maina is Associate Professor at Dedan Kimathi University of Technology in Nyeri, Kenya where he teaches electrical engineering and also conduct research in a number of areas including bioacoustics, IoT, machine learning and data science. Since September 2019 he has led the Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAIL). He also serves as the board chair of Data Science Africa.

Dr. Jessica Montgomery

Executive Director of ai@cam, University of Cambridge

Jessica Montgomery is currently Director of ai@cam, a new University of Cambridge strategic mission to develop AI technologies that serve science, citizens, and society. Alongside this role, she leads a variety of research and policy programmes tackling the real-world challenges associated with developing and deploying AI for societal benefit. These include: Accelerate Science, an initiative developing AI tools and collaborations in support of research and innovation; the Data Trusts Initiative, an incubator programme for pilot projects creating trustworthy data governance frameworks; and strategic research agenda development for the ELISE/ELLIS network of European AI research. Her interests in AI and its consequences for science and society stem from her policy career, in which she worked with parliamentarians, leading researchers and civil society organisations to bring scientific evidence to bear on major policy issues.

Prof. Dr. Annette Oxenius

VP Research, ETH Zurich

The Vice President for Research is committed to excellent, free and open research that is characterised by personal responsibility and crosses boundaries between disciplines and institutions. To this end, she and her team promote, support and advise researchers at all career levels on networks and research infrastructures as well as on projects and careers. Together with the Rector, she is also responsible for evaluations of the departments and ETH units, reporting and policies that contribute to the quality assurance of research at ETH Zurich. In addition, she is responsible for ensuring scientific integrity and is committed to ensuring that this is practised at ETH Zurich. Since 2012 Annette Oxenius is also full Professor for Immunology.

Katharina Frey

Executive Director, ICAIN

Katharina Frey currently serves as Executive Director of the International Computation and AI Network (ICAIN), which is based at ETH Zurich. Ms. Frey brings a strong track record in digital diplomacy, AI governance, and global partnerships. She was a career diplomat with the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs for 17 years and was posted in Paris, Bern, and Vienna (UN). In her last posting at HQ, she helped establish the Digital Foreign Policy Division and shaped Switzerland's strategy on digital governance and cybersecurity. She has led projects to strengthen cyber resilience for the "International Geneva aka UN site in Geneva" and has pioneered AI research initiatives with ETH and international partners.

Supporters of ICAIN

The supporters of ICAIN provide financial contributions to its thematic pillars. Their commitment helps to scale pilot projects and advance ICAIN's long-term mission of making AI resources accessible for the common good:

Office for Foreign Affairs, Principality of Liechtenstein

Our Pilot Projects

The network plans to be fully operational by early 2025. The goals of 2024 are setting up its organization and looking for suitable projects and partners as well as running pilot projects to generate early impact and learnings for the setup.

1. Improved Weather Prediction for Sustainable Agriculture

In order to improve agricultural production in Africa, it is important to improve the accuracy of weather forecasts available to small scale farmers. Agriculture in Africa is mainly rain fed and accurate rainfall prediction is likely to improve yields by allowing farmers to appropriately time activities such as planting and also help them select appropriate crops to grow.

Goal: In this project we will leverage weather data collected by large networks of sensors to improve weather prediction by linking these data with new artificial intelligence based weather prediction models running on powerful computers. The key goal is to provide accurate medium to long range localised precipitation forecasts.

Partners: This work will bring together Data Science Africa (DSA), the Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAIL) at Dedan Kimathi University of Technology in Kenya, Amini, a Kenyan climate startup and Communal Shamba Coffee.

2. Early diagnosis of plant diseases through spectroscopy

About 40% of the global crop production is lost to pests. Sub-Saharan Africa is most vulnerable to the increasing risks of pests and diseases spreading in agriculture. The current methods of disease identification and diagnosis involve experts traveling to disparate parts of the country and visually scoring the plants by looking at the disease symptoms manifested on the leaves.

Goal: The research project investigates a 3-D printed smartphone add-on spectrometer that determines the state of disease in plants before it is visibly symptomatic. Portable devices for the early detection of crop diseases are needed to support the farmers and experts working in the field. The output of this tool is integrated into a smartphone in the form of an app, making it accessible for use in the field in real applications.

Partners: This project will be executed by Data Science Africa (DSA), and ETH Zurich.

3. Ethical AI for Humanitarian Action - Developing Tailored LLMs

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) seeks to leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance its humanitarian work. Challenges like the bias of existing models, the underrepresentation of humanitarian contexts in commercial AI training sets, and the sensitivity of data related to conflicts limit the adoption of off-the-shelf AI models.

Goal: To address these constraints, the ICRC will investigate the responsible development of LLMs specifically tailored to its mandate on international humanitarian law and in line with its protection work in favor of people affected by armed conflicts. Ethical and accountability considerations will be at the center of this project, with the development of tools to assess if developed models are safe to be used for humanitarian applications.

Partners: This project will be executed by ICRC, ETH Zurich, and EPFL.