On 19 June 2026, the Faculty of Informatics at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) and China's Westlake University held their first joint workshop, marking the beginning of a long-term research collaboration with one of the world's fastest-rising research universities.

In the opening keynote, Yaochu Jin, Head of the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the School of Engineering, Westlake University, introduced the research activities of the Trustworthy and General AI Laboratory, which he leads. He presented the laboratory's latest advances in trustworthy and general artificial intelligence and emphasized the strategic importance that Westlake University attaches to building a strong scientific partnership with the Faculty of Informatics at ELTE.

The workshop highlighted numerous areas of synergy between the research profiles of the two institutions. Researchers from Westlake University—Hengjie Yu, Qiqi Liu, and Fei Ming—presented their latest work on AI systems for scientific discovery, the integration of federated learning with distributed data-driven evolutionary optimization, and deep learning-assisted multi-objective evolutionary optimization.

Representing the Faculty of Informatics, Dean Tamás Kozsik provided an overview of Eötvös Loránd University and the Faculty's education, research, and innovation activities, while outlining several promising directions for expanding future collaboration between the two institutions.

Researchers János Botzheim, Zoltán Kolarovszki, Mohammed Alshawki, and Máté Gyarmati presented the Faculty's latest research in several key areas of artificial intelligence and computer science, including evolutionary and memetic algorithms, quantum machine learning, AI-assisted security protocols, and secure federated statistical computation.

The participants also explored potential joint research directions and future collaboration opportunities. The first Westlake–ELTE Workshop served not only as a platform for sharing scientific achievements but also as the starting point of a long-term international partnership with the potential to foster joint research projects, researcher exchanges, and participation in international funding programmes, thereby opening new opportunities for the Faculty of Informatics at ELTE.