Launch of New Research Project AIRIS

2026-07-27

AIRIS unites 21 partners, including NaCTeM, from Europe, Canada and the US to develop generative AI models that integrate biological knowledge and clinical data. AIRIS' main goal is to deliver an AI collaborator that helps researchers better understand disease progression and advance personalised medicine.

Patients with the same diagnosis can experience very different disease courses and treatment outcomes, shaped by a complex interplay of biological and environmental factors. However, current generative AI systems aimed at modelling such diseases primarily learn statistical correlations from their training data rather than the underlying biological mechanisms that cause disease. As a result, their predictions can be unreliable and difficult for researchers to interpret and trust. This is especially true for diseases whose mechanisms are not yet fully understood, even by medical practitioners.

To address this fundamental challenge, the new research project AIRIS (Mechanism-Informed Multimodal Generative AI for Causal and Dynamical Modelling in Biomedical Research) brings together the multidisciplinary expertise of 21 research and industry partners from nine European countries, the United States, and Canada. Over the next four years, the consortium will receive €16.9 million in funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe Programme to develop a generative AI platform that builds and reasons with mechanistic models of disease, rather than relying solely on statistical patterns. The goal is to design a platform that assists researchers in identifying previously unknown disease pathways and developing novel scientific hypotheses.

More information...
https://airis-ai.eu/