iMagine Project Featured on EC Horizon Magazine

EGI Foundation’s role as project coordinator of iMagine has been showcased in Horizon Magazine, the European Commission’s flagship research publication. The feature article, “AI dives into a sea of data, from plankton to pollution,” examines how digital infrastructure and AI tools are helping aquatic scientists unlock insights from decades of accumulated environmental data. The story emphasises how connecting marine scientists with high-performance computing, GPU capacity, and data storage turns raw sensor streams and imagery into actionable knowledge for ocean restoration.

Funded under the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, iMagine (Imaging data and services for aquatic science) was launched in 2022 to provide researchers with an open-access AI framework built specifically for marine and freshwater research. Coordinated by the EGI Foundation, the project brought together digital infrastructure specialists, AI developers, and research infrastructures to create a unified platform connected to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Hosted on cloud nodes within the EGI e-Infrastructure Federation, iMagine provides scalable compute and specialised toolkits that support the complete AI lifecycle, from data annotation and model training to deployment across operational thematic services.

Gergely Sipos, iMagine Project Coordinator, stated that "Some underwater sensors have been observing what's happening in our ocean for years, even decades… Without AI, it would be impossible to analyse all that information efficiently. AI is opening up new kinds of research."

Support for the scientific community continues beyond the project lifecycle through open access to iMagine’s AI platform, training resources, and technical support. This ongoing compute infrastructure ensures Europe’s environmental research directly feeds into key policy frameworks such as the EU OceanEye initiative, the EU Mission: Restore our Ocean and Waters, and the European Digital Twin of the Ocean.