Helena will continue development of the ecosystem for AI in Gothenburg

Helena Theander comes most recently from Chalmers Industrial Technoloy and where she has focused on building and developing the ecosystem around the Grafen area - a sphere of activity that is far removed from AI but has many similarities.

'When we built the Grafen area in Sweden, we faced a similar challenge. How do you build a community with participants from different sectors and get companies to open up about their challenges in order to collectively drive development in a new area?' says Helena.

'AI is one of the hottest topics right now, so it is really exciting to have the opportunity to contribute to the development of this ecosystem in Gothenburg and in Sweden.'

AI innovation of Sweden is the collaborative effort of about 50 partners. The companies represent a wide spectrum of industries and applications - everything from the highly technological areas of mobility and medtech to the more traditional fields of insurance, education and law.

'I look forward to the challenge of working with new, unestablished areas without built-in structures and getting people from different types of organisations, industries and technical areas to collaborate. By finding common issues and working together, we can build value chains.'

In her new role, Helena will focus on finding forms of collaboration for the various parties and create increased activity within the network and thus develop the ecosystem. She will also manage operations in the Gothenburg node.

'We have a meeting place - an arena - on site in Gothenburg, and many active people who are seen at the location daily. Now it's time to take the next step and create a structure, increased internal involvement between the parties on site and to see how people really meet there - including with ideas and inspiration,' Helena continues.

AI Innovation of Sweden currently has a first node established in Gothenburg and preliminary studies are in progress in more locations throughout the country. Additional nodes will be established in the greater Stockholm area, southern Sweden, northern Sweden and in Örebro.

The Gothenburg node
AI Innovation of Sweden's first node was inaugurated in February 2019. There are currently around 30 people on site on the common co-working premises, a mixture of life science specialists, researchers, project managers and Phd students who work with projects within everything from life science and autonomous vehicles to space data and GDPR law. The parties meet several times daily and presentations, meetings and workshops are held regularly in the open landscape.