Global South AI

Bridging Gaps for Underrepresented Researchers in AI

IJCAI-ECAI 2026 D&I Activity | 🗓 17 August, 2026 ⏰ 9:00 AM – 12:30 PM | 📍 Bremen, Germany

This IJCAI-ECAI-26 D&I activity aims to empower researchers and students from the Global South by addressing disparities in ML education, mentorship, and global collaboration. The half-day, in-person event (09:00--12:30) will bring together students, early-career researchers, and academics for mentoring, networking, and skill development in ML research.

The program includes keynote talks, industry keynotes, contributed oral presentations and/or poster session, a 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, and a mentorship initiative. Participants will gain exposure to cutting-edge work in efficient deep learning, model compression, data-efficient training, and AI for social and environmental impact. They will also engage in discussions on actionable strategies to enhance participation, equity, and inclusion in AI research. Underrepresented researchers, including women, early-career scientists, and participants from low-resource or marginalized communities, are strongly encouraged to participate.

Topics of Interest

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Efficient and Resource-Constrained ML: model compression, pruning, quantization, edge ML, TinyML, data-efficient training, coreset selection, deployment-aware ML systems, and real-world constraints such as latency and memory
Learning Paradigms Under Limited Data: continual learning, incremental, curriculum learning, meta-learning, transfer learning, online/streaming adaptation, generalization under distribution shift, robustness, and domain adaptation
Foundation Models and Low-Resource LLMs: multilingual NLP, low-resource LLM alignment and adaptation, cultural bias, scalable and efficient foundation models, synthetic data generation, and generative approaches for imbalanced datasets
Autonomous Agents and Scientific ML: reinforcement learning, multi-agent systems, robotics, autonomous decision-making, and simulation-based learning for data-scarce environments
Societal and Environmental Impact: applications in healthcare, agriculture, climate, remote sensing for sustainable development, education, disaster response, and public policy, emphasizing locally relevant and high-impact solutions
Fairness and Governance: algorithmic fairness, bias mitigation, AI sovereignty, human-AI collaboration, community-driven and participatory AI design, and addressing socioeconomic, gender, and cultural dimensions of AI adoption

Submission Requirements

We invite students, postdocs, and researchers from all areas of AI and ML to submit short papers (upto 4 pages, excluding references and appendices) presenting ideas, experiences, or community initiatives related to inclusive ML, mentorship, and low-resource learning. Submissions may include technical contributions, case studies, or actionable strategies that advance equitable ML research.

Papers should be anonymized to the best of the authors' ability and follow the IJCAI 2026 submission format. The review process is double-blind. Submissions are non-archival, and accepted work may be submitted to or published at other venues.

All submissions must be made via OpenReview: IJCAI 2026 GlobalSouthAI Submission Link

Important Dates

June 15, 2026 – Paper Submission Opens
July 05, 2026 July 12, 2026 (AoE) – Paper Submission Deadline
July 15, 2026 July 21, 2026 (AoE) – Decision Notification
17 August, 2026 – IJCAI 2026, Bremen, Germany

Presentation Information

All accepted papers will be presented during the Lightning Talks Session at IJCAI 2026.

Top contributions will be invited to participate in the 3-Minute Presentation (3MT) competition.

3-Minute Presentation (3MT) Contest

A subset of papers will be selected to participate in a 3-Minute Presentation (3MT) Contest, following the global 3MT format: one static slide, no transitions or animations, and a strict three-minute limit.

A special prize committee will recognize the most impactful presentations through the following awards:

3MT Awards

🥇 3MT Winner Award
🥈 3MT Runner-up Award
🌍 3MT People’s Choice Award

Paper Awards

🎓 Best Paper Award

🎓 Best Student Paper Award

🎓 Best (UG) Student Paper Award

🎖️ All presented works will receive certificates of recognition and appreciation.

Registration Details

IJCAI 2026 Registration Page

Call for Sponsors

We welcome organizations and individuals to support travel grants, 3MT Competition Prizes and D&I activities, helping empower underrepresented AI researchers. Sponsors will be recognized on the website, during the event, and in all D&I activity materials.