Multimedia and AI in Norway, Vietnam and Ireland

In May 2023, the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen formally signed a memorandum of understanding with Dublin City University in Ireland and the VNUHCM University of Science in Vietnam. The aim was to strengthen long-term collaboration in research, education and innovation on multimedia and AI.

While the agreement formally established the partnership, the collaboration itself had already been developing over several years of joint work in multimedia retrieval, benchmark evaluation, human-centred computing, and related technologies.

The collaboration is notable for being driven at the department level rather than through large and often slow-moving institutional structures.

Collaboration snapshot

From 2023 to 2026 the collaboration has produced a range of good results.

• 45+ joint publications and benchmark papers presented at leading international conferences in multimedia and AI research
• Organisational and leadership roles across 15+ international conferences and workshops
• Senior leadership contributions to ACM Multimedia and ACM ICMR
• Co-development of internationally recognised benchmark initiatives including LSC, CASTLE, and Multimedia Verification
• Research, education, and student collaboration connecting Europe and Asia

Conference attendance

Researchers from Infomedia, DCU, and HCMUS played leading organisational and scientific roles in major international conferences and research communities.

• The ACM International Conference on Multimedia (ACM MM).
• The ACM International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval (ICMR), Multimedia Modeling (MMM), Content-Based Multimedia Indexing (CBMI)
• MediaEval
• The NII Testbeds and Community for Information Access Research (NTCIR)
• The International Symposium on Information and Communication Technology (SOICT).

Rather than contributing solely as authors, members of the partnership helped organise and lead many of these international activities through conference leadership, benchmark coordination, workshop organisation, proceedings editing, and evaluation initiatives.

These responsibilities are typically entrusted to internationally recognised research groups and play an important role in shaping research standards and future directions in multimedia research.

Lifelogging and multimedia verification

The collaboration became particularly active within international benchmark ecosystems such as the ACM Lifelog Search Challenge (LSC), CASTLE, and Multimedia Verification. These initiatives provide shared evaluation platforms that allow research teams from around the world to test and compare multimedia retrieval systems, conversational technologies, and multimodal interaction tools under common conditions.

Through long-term involvement in these activities, the partnership contributed not only research outputs, but also to the international infrastructure supporting the field itself.

Alongside this international leadership, the collaboration expanded into several rapidly developing research areas including conversational systems, multimodal question answering, misinformation detection, explainable systems, and retrieval-augmented technologies.

At the same time, the partnership maintained a strong emphasis on usability, interaction design, and human-centred approaches, connecting technical research with broader societal and practical challenges.

Student pipeline

One of the most important outcomes of the collaboration has been the development of a strong international student and researcher pipeline connecting the three universities.

Students were not merely observers within the partnership, but active contributors to internationally evaluated systems, benchmark competitions, and scientific publications. Several student-led projects gained international visibility through participation in initiatives such as the ACM Lifelog Search Challenge and the Grand Challenge on Multimedia Verification, demonstrating a level of engagement and technical quality that is uncommon for student-centred research projects.

Teaching and Student Impact

The collaboration has strengthened the educational exchange between Norway, Ireland, and Vietnam through invited lectures, graduate mentoring, doctoral examination activities, and interdisciplinary teaching related to multimedia systems, conversational technologies, human-computer interaction, and trustworthy systems.

• International co-supervision across three universities
• Student-led systems presented internationally
• Guest lectures and graduate mentoring activities
• Participation in international benchmark competitions
• Contributions to large-scale student innovation activities in Vietnam
• Long-term researcher and graduate mobility pipelin

The partnership also connected teaching directly with international research infrastructures. Students gained hands-on experience working with multimedia retrieval systems, conversational technologies, multimodal interaction, usability evaluation, and human-centred design while collaborating with international research teams across multiple countries.

This created opportunities for co-supervision, international publication, challenge participation, and interdisciplinary research training at an early stage of academic development.

Innovation ecosystem

In addition to research and teaching activities, the collaboration contributed to broader student and innovation ecosystems in Vietnam through involvement in the Ho Chi Minh City AI Challenge, one of the country’s largest student technology competitions. In 2024, the competition (2nd iteration) attracted more than 3,000 participants from over 100 universities, schools, and research institutions across Vietnam, reflecting the growing scale and visibility of multimedia and computing education within the region.

Globally connected

Today, the Infomedia, DCU, and HCMUS collaboration represents far more than a conventional academic partnership. Over a relatively short period, it has grown into a globally connected research and education network with visible international leadership, strong interdisciplinary cooperation, sustainable student development, and increasing influence within the international multimedia research community.

The partnership demonstrates how sustained international collaboration can create not only scientific output, but also meaningful institutional impact, global visibility, advanced research infrastructures, and a strong foundation for training the next generation of researchers in multimedia and related technologies.