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IDSIA's research focuses on optimal universal search algorithms (e.g., OOPS), artificial recurrent neural networks, universal predictors and reinforcement learners, complexity and generalization issues, unsupervised learning and information theory, forecasting, artificial ants and combinatorial optimization, evolutionary computation. IDSIA is small but visible, competitive, and influential. Its algorithms hold the world records for several important operations research benchmarks (e.g., see NATURE 406(6791):39-42 for an overview of IDSIA's artificial ant algorithms). Some of IDSIA's results were reviewed not only in science journals such as Nature, Science, Scientific American, but also in the popular press, including TIME magazine, the New York Times, der SPIEGEL, and many others.
IDSIA was the smallest of the world's top ten AI labs listed in the 1997 "X-Lab Survey" by Business Week magazine, and ranked in fourth place in the category "COMPUTER SCIENCE - BIOLOGICALLY INSPIRED." Our most important work was done after 1997 though.

Some previous IDSIA postdocs who went on to become professors
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Einstein
Switzerland is a good place for scientists. It is the origin of special relativity (1905) and World Wide Web (1990), is associated with 105 Nobel laureates, boasts by far the most Nobel prizes per capita (450% of US value), the highest citation impact factor, and the highest supercomputing capacity per capita.
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Matterhorn
IDSIA is located near the beautiful city of Lugano in Ticino (pictures), the scenic southernmost province of Switzerland. Milano, Italy's center of fashion and finance, is 1 hour away, Venice 3 hours.
For decades, Switzerland has been world's richest nation. It also got the highest ranking in the World Database of Happiness.
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