News

From 25 August to 5 September 2025, King’s College London welcomed 110 young AI researchers from across Europe and beyond for the TRAIL Summer Workshop 2025.

ISIA LAB is pleased to announce the release of the 2nd edition of From Human Attention to Computational Attention – A Multidisciplinary Approach, edited by Matei Mancas, Vincent P. Ferrera, and Antoine Coutrot, and published by Springer Nature with UMONS access.

On May 15, 2025, ISIA Lab (UMONS) took part in XR CONNECT in Charleroi — a dynamic event gathering XR professionals across Wallonia. From cutting-edge demos to impactful research projects funded by Wal4XR, the day showcased how immersive technologies are shaping the future of industry and innovation.

UMONS' ISIA Lab Collaborates with MOOV Insights to Revolutionize Physical Condition Analysis

Last week wrapped up the TRAIL Summer Workshop 2024, a two-week gathering in Lisbon that brought together researchers for collaboration and hands-on work in AI. The event wasn’t just about research—it was a chance to dive into Lisbon’s fast-growing AI scene and make new connections.

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ISIA Lab @ SmartNation AI Hackathon

Nantes, France - From June 12 to 15, six members from ISIA (A. Maiorca, E. Ennadifi, F. Rocca, M. Mancas, M. Benkedadra and V. Stragier) attended the ACM IMX 2023.

June 4-10 2023 - Rhodes Island (Greece): ISIA Lab was at the IEEE International Conference on Accoustic, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) 2023. PhD candidates G. Le Vaillant, C. Gille, K. El Haddad and Prof. T. Dutoit presented their work and attended various talks.

April 16-21 2023 - Hannover (Germany): PhD student Mohamed Benkedadra present the project Field Worker Protection at Hannover Messe 2023.

April 25 2023 - Baltimore (USA): PhD candidate Luca La Fisca presented his poster on Explainable AI for EEG Biomarkers Identification in Obstructive Sleep Apnea Severity Scoring Task at IEEE NER 2023.

April 19-20 2023 - Paris: Prof. Thierry Dutoit attended a scientific council hosted by IRCAM to present their lab and discuss future directions in AI.

This week, our research lab had the pleasure of welcoming high school students for an exciting internship. The objective of this initiative, proposed by MUMONS, was to make them discover, through 3 days of activities, the Polytechnic Faculty of Mons, as well as the electrical studies.

Our colleague, François Rocca, shared his expertise with The Mind & Market forum, which took place on Tuesday 13/12 at Van Der Valk Hotel in Mons. Francois Rocca is a project manager at CLICK and a trainer of creative technologies.

In his interview with Podcast ICI Berlin, Dr. Felix talked about the development of artificial intelligence and its possible effects on society.

On December 7, 2022, Natan Hubens, ISIA Lab researcher, defended his PhD at Polytech Mons on « Towards Lighter and Faster Deep Neural Networks with Parameter Pruning ».

The first knowledge sharing meeting was held on Monday 5/12/2022 at ISIA Lab.

A new journal article from ISIA Lab has been published in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience. The article is titled: "Biases in BCI experiments: Do we really need to balance stimulus properties across categories?" Congrats to ISIA Lab researchers: Luca La Fisca, Virginie Vandenbulcke, and Bernard Gosselin.

This ebook serves as a guide for those who are new to medical imaging. It provides definitions and resources to learn anatomy, and to find quality papers, and datasets.

Dr. Vandenbulcke is a senior researcher from ISIA Lab. Her speech at the AI Hubs webinar on 16/11/2022 was about personalized collaborative recommendations in the retail sector.

The 2022 edition of the "Créactifs" workshops of UMONS will soon start. The opportunity for anyone interested in creative technologies to learn the basics of the most well-known tools in the field. An information session is organized on Tuesday 11 October at 18:00 at click (Boulevard Initialis, 30).

Victor DELVIGNE publicly defends his doctoral thesis on 7/10 at 17:30, and the presentation will be on 4/10 at 14:00

Antoine Maiorca from ISIA Lab has presented his work at the 49TH international conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques (SIGGRAPH), which took place in Vancouver in August.

TRAIL workshops are systematically organised internationally in order to bring researchers from different backgrounds to reflect on AI challenges and their solutions. TRAIL workshop this year is being held from 5/9 to 16/9/2022. From ISIA Lab, Antoine, MAIORCA, Victor DELVIGNE, Mohamed BENKEDADRA, HAMMOUDEH, Dr. Felix SOMMER, Dr. Matie MANCAS, and Prof. Thierry DUTOIT are taking part.

After initiating the Mons AI Meetups in 2017, various Teaching and Research departments of the Polytechnic Faculty and the Faculty of Sciences, supported by the UMONS Numediart and InforTech Research Institutes, offer an Artificial Intelligence University Certificate (Hands on AI) consisting of a 5-credit teaching module delivered in the evening and a 5-credit “workshop” type module delivered over a weekend.

Mohammed El Amine Mokhtari from ISIA Lab is presenting a paper about smiling and laughter detection at ESANN conference. The 30th European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning (ESANN 2022) is taking place in Bruges, Belgium from 5/10 to 7/10.

Hugo Bohy from ISIA Lab is presenting a paper about smiling and laughter detection at ACII conference. The 10th International Conference on Affective Computing & Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2022) is taking place in Nara, Japan from 18/10 to 21/10.

Victor DELVIGNE and Luca La FISCA, ISIA Lab researchers, took part at EMBC 2022 (Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference) in Galsgow. A paper and a poster were presented in the conference.

Congrats to ISIA Lab researchers: Elias Ennadifi, and Bernard Gosselin on the publication of a new article paper in Elsevier journal Computers and Electronics in agriculture, and another conference paper in ISPAG 2022.

Vincent Stragier, ISIA researcher,is presenting about "Visual impairment and modular intelligent agents" on 30/6/2022.

A paper and an extended abstract were accepted in LREC 2022 - SMILA workshop. Congrats to ISIA Lab researchers: Ahmad Hammoudeh, Antoine Maiorca, Hugo Bohy, and Thierry Dutoit. On 24/6/2022, Hugo Bohy and Ahmad Hammoudeh presented their work in Marsielle, France.

CUTE is an annual summer school of one or two days during which experts came to explain ” hands in the sludge “, the functioning of a tool of their composition, in the theme Culture and Technology. The objective is to learn how to use these tools, and perceive their uses and limitations. This year, CUTE 2022 are being relaunched on the 7th and 8th of July 2022.

Loïc Reboursière is presenting the paper « Guitar Improvisations with Hexaphonic Multieffect (GIHME) Dataset and Practice Analysis”, authored by Loïc Reboursière, Thierry Dutoit, Vincent Tiffon at the Sound And Music Computing Conference 2022, Saint-Étienne, France (https://zenodo.org/record/6573698). The paper describes the dataset he recorded during his Phd thesis on hexaphonic guitar and a first practice analysis based on interviews of the guitarists.

The 6th MeetIA meeting is being held on 23 May 2022 in ISIA Lab. MeetIA sessions which involved PhD researchers are moderated by Dr Matei MANCAS. The researchers work on AI challenges designed by TRAIL Institute.

ISIA Lab takes part in Neuroscience meeting of the Research Group in Information Signal and Vision (ISIS). The event was held in Sorbonne AI, Paris on May 12 2022. Victor Delvigne presents his research project on the novel methods to process EEG signals based on self-supervised learning.

Benkedadra, ISIA researcher, co-presented about ""AI models for the detection of 2D/3D dangerous actions for the security of workers in railway sites at Infrabel" on 19/5/2022.

Euranova company is visiting ISIA Lab on Monday 23 May 12:30.

A new journal article from ISIA Lab has been published in IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology. The article is titled: "PhyDAA: Physiological Dataset Assessing Attention." Congrats to ISIA Lab researchers: Victor Delvigne, and Thierry Dutoit.

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The 5th MeetIA meeting was held on 29 April 2022 at10:30 am online. MeetIA sessions which involved PhD researchers was moderated by Dr Matei MANCAS. The researchers work on AI challenges designed by TRAIL Institute.

ISIA Lab took part in the InfortechDay 2022, which was held on March 30th, 2022 in Mons, Belgium. Ahmad Hammoudeh, and Mohamed Benkedadra presented the following posters:

Infortech-Numediart seminars/technical presentations resume. Hammoudeh, from ISIA Lab is presenting his research about the relation between rotation encoding and image classification.

The 4th MeetIA meeting was held on Tuesday 22 March at10:30 am in Numediart room of UMONS. MeetIA sessions which involves 8 PhD researchers is moderated by Dr Matei MANCAS. The researchers work on AI challenges designed by TRAIL Institute.

Prof. Thierry Dutoit gives a keynote speech about "the link between Artificial Intelligence and Media" on 16/03/2022 at 16:00 in AI4Belgium's working group "Artificial Intelligence for media and live entertainment". The event is organized in collaboration with TWIST and UMONS during the Belgian Week of Artificial Intelligence.

Prof. Thierry Dutoit takes part in the European AI week 2022 as a keynote speaker on Monday 14 March 2022. The event is organized by AI4Belgium and discusses Art, Fashion, Design & Artificial Intelligence.

ISIA Lab takes part in NeurIPS 2021 debriefing organized by University of Amsterdam on 15 March 2022, wherein PhD students and/or senior researchers briefly present the papers they found the most interesting at NeurIPS 2021. Ahmad Hammoudeh will talk about a paper titled "On the Frequency Bias of Generative Models" authored by Katja Schwarz, Yiyi Liao, and Andreas Geiger.

A new journal article from ISIA Lab has been published. The article is titled: "Where is my mind (looking at)? A study of the EEG-Visual Attention Relationship." Congrats to ISIA Lab researchers: Victor Delvigne, Luca La Fisca, Nathan Hubens, Antoine Maiorca, and Thierry Dutoit.

Summary: In the context of the Conference on the Future of Europe, representatives from 38 European university alliances are addressing 10 challenges that the EU faces today through the publication of policy recommendations to be shared with European decision-makers. Ahmad Hammoudeh from ISIALab, is contributing to the challenge titled “how the EU can regulate digital platforms without limiting freedom of speech”. He is visiting the European Parliament in Strasbourg on March 3-4, 2022.

Summary: A multidisciplinary workshop on smiles and laughter,SMILA, will be held on 24 June 2022. The proceedings of the SMILA workshop will be published along with the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LERC). Kevin El-haddad, from ISIA Lab and a member of SMILA's organizing committee, invited interested researchers from all areas to submit their papers to the workshop.

The fourth work package (WP4) of the ARIAC project was kicked off on 2/2/2022 in UMONS (Houdain site). At the beginning of the kick-off meeting, Prof. Thierry Dutoit introduced the fourth work package which focuses on optimized AI implementations. The event was moderated by Dr. Matie Mancas, and attended by 40 AI researchers.

Summary: Loïc Reboursière publicly defends his doctoral thesis on December 17, 2021

Summary: Marine Lagasse, PhD student at UMONS, won the Prize of the Research Day from Wallonia-Brussels Federation (PhD students category). Her research about the visitor experience proposes an innovative approach for the museum mediation and opens new perspectives for developing new technology in museum.