AI Meetup Copenhagen #8

Join us at AI Meetup Copenhagen 19/02/2026

Connect with innovators, designers, academics, suits and developers in a relaxed and positive environment. Enjoy talks from exciting speakers and demo your own ideas on stage. Be a part of our vibrant community!

This is a multidisciplinary community and meetup for innovators, creators, and techies who are passionate about learning and talking about artificial intelligence.

The event is open from 16:45. The program starts 17:15.

Lightning talks (15 minutes)

• Thomas Bolander, PhD, Professor at DTU Compute (Technical University of Denmark)
• Sofie Grue Haumann, Head of AI Enablement, Global Data & AI, Novo Nordisk
• Ananth Gopal, PhD, Team lead, AI & Data platform, Nilfisk

Demos (10 minutes)

• TBD
• TBD

SPEAKER BIOS & TOPICS:

Thomas Bolander, PhD, is a professor at DTU Compute. His main research focus is on the modelling of social phenomena and social intelligence with the aim of creating explainable computer systems that can interact robustly and intelligently with humans and other computer systems.

He is one of the founders and main researchers within the area of Epistemic Planning - providing AI agents, e.g. robots, with the ability to take the perspective of other agents into account when planning.

He is also one of the central public communicators of AI in Denmark with several hundreds of popular science talks and media appearances. In 2019, he received the H.C. Ørsted award for excellence in science communication. Thomas has also served on a number of commissions and think tanks working on the societal aspects of digitalisation and AI (including the SIRI commission, the TechDK commission, the Tiger Council, and the Governmental Expert Group on Tech Giants). In 2024, he received the DAIR "Lifetime achievement in AI" award for his research and research communication.

Topic: Intentions, attention and social intelligence. Human social intelligence relies heavily on our ability to infer what others intend to do or what their focus of attention is. Fluent human-robot interaction requires robots to have similar abilities. But how to give them that? What are the relevant paradigms and methods within AI, and what can we learn from philosophy and cognitive psychology to help us built more socially intelligent and situation-aware robots for the future?

Sofie Grue Haumann has worked in the field of AI adoption since 2016 – starting out in a startup and is now Head of AI Enablement in Novo Nordisk. She has a background from CBS and her focus has always been on enhancing people-centric AI adoption, bridging the gap between innovative technology, user engagement and enablement. She is passionate about inspiring people to get started with their AI journey, regardless of their technical and has a strong track record of driving inspiring, educating and empowering initiatives that promote integration of AI.

Topic: "How Novo Nordisk is driving AI adoption across the enterprise — and how we measure the impact."

Ananth Gopal, leads a data & AI team in Nilfisk's "Autonomous & Digital Solutions" division.

He earned his PhD in computing applied to robotics, and has since worked in roles across both academia and industry. His current interests lie in applying vision-language models and reinforcement learning to control robots.

Topic: "Teaching Robots to Learn: A Live Reinforcement Learning Demo"

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Venue:
EK Erhvervsakademi København - Guldbergsgade Campus (formerly known as "KEA").

Sponsorship opportunities:
Please contact the group administrator (Martin Schultz) if you would like to be an event sponsor, a sponsor of food and/or beverages or if you would like be a future venue sponsor. This is a non-profit event.

Sponsors:
Thanks to EK Erhvervsakademi København for sponsoring beverages and snacks.

A big thanks to our foundational sponsor Transmission.

Please note:

1. Attendance is capped at 145 participants to maintain quality interaction, and we reserve the right to select attendees to optimize group dynamics.
2. Photos and perhaps video will be taken at the meetup and shared on our Meetup.com group, on various LinkedIn channels, our LinkedIn newsletter, the AI Meetup Copenhagen website, possibly by the event host and other participants and sponsors. Let us know at the event if you don't want to be in the photos or videos (that's not a problem).
3. If you're signed up, but find that you're unable to attend, you're expected to cancel your attendance (your RSVP status) here on the Meetup platform. You can still join future meetups - you only cancel your attendance for this meetup.
4. Speaker bios are submitted by the speakers themselves and reviewed only for basic accuracy. AI Meetup Copenhagen does not independently verify all information provided.