2026-05-19 –, Cineac
In recent years, the creation of sovereign national and European Large Language Models (LLMs) has accelerated significantly. With numerous initiatives underway, including major projects like OpenEuroLLM and GPT-NL, as well as community-driven efforts such as GEITje, various stakeholders are collaborating to develop LLMs that are trained on official EU languages, leverage national and EU infrastructure, and adhere to open and transparent data management practices.
This discussion will delve into the technical and policy challenges associated with developing these models, while also exploring the potential benefits and implications they may have for research and the public sector. Both for the presence as well as the future.
Join us in this open discussion and let's connect our minds!
This panel aims to connect researchers, startups, and policymakers interested in developing national European sovereign LLMs and their responsible deployment.
What is the key take away of your session?:Experts in LLM training, deployment, responsible AI, and intelligent virtual humans emphasize advancing national European and sovereign LLMs requires cutting-edge research, ethical governance, optimized infrastructure, and human-centered applications.
Duuk is Advisor Responsible AI, working on ethical uses of AI in research and education at SURF.
Thomas is a member of SURF’s high-performance machine learning team, where he develops AI models that are trained efficiently on high-performance computing systems while also learning effectively to achieve strong performance. Currently involved in national and European initiatives on large language models, as well as the national AI factory, Thomas is working at the intersection of research and deployment.
Roel Boumans graduated from Delft University of Technology in Aerospace Engineering on the topic of space robotics in 1988. He worked in industry for over 25 years, and obtained is PhD in Medical Sciences at Radboud University in 2020 on the topic of robots in healthcare. He is now working as an assistant professor at the Behavioural Science Institute of the Radboud University. He has started in 2020 the social human agent and robot communication (SHARC) lab on research into designing and building virtual humans. Several experiments have already been done with virtual humans for healthcare, politics, sports and commerce.
Doctoral Candidate researching the development and use of EU foundation model within the OpenEuroLLM project.
Diana is working at the Eindhoven University of Technology.
Founder of AI Studio Delta, and developer of GEITje, a Dutch Large Language Model