Dear reader, Right now you are reading the very first SAILS newsletter. In this newsletter, you will find news, events and meet the researchers of the SAILS program. If you want to be updated about our events and receive the newsletter in the future, join the SAILS mailinglist! If you know anyone who might be interested in SAILS and its activities, please feel free to forward this newsletter. Our next newsletter will be send out after the summer. We wish you all a good summer!

SAILS started the new year with a new professor. Joost Batenburg will join the SAILS team with his expertise in Imaging and Visualisation. This makes him the second professor appointed for the SAILS programme.

We would like to welcome Matthijs Westera, who will be joining LUCL as Assistant Professor of Humanities and AI for SAILS.

We are very honoured to announce that on the 1st July Bart Custers has been appointed Professor of Law and Data Science and has thus become the first Professor in the new 'stimuleringsprogramma' SAILS.

On October 14, the first symposium of the university-wide initiative SAILS took place. Scientists from Leiden University and other Dutch universities came together to share their enthusiasm and expertise in the field of Artificial Intelligence in a festive symposium, in the atmospheric Museum of Ethnology.

SAILS Professor Gerard van Westen tells us about his first 100 days 'in the office'.