CALM4GRAINS Subproject Officially Funded under the GRAINS Coordinated Project

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to share that the CALM4GRAINS subproject — Cross-domain Adaptation and Learning for Microscopy — has been officially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU) under the Research Projects in the field of Artificial Intelligence 2025 (AIA 2025) call.

Led by the CVPD group at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), CALM4GRAINS is Subproject 2 of the coordinated GRAINS initiative (Green Responsible AI for Next-gen Sustainable Bio-Imaging). The project will develop cross-domain adaptation and learning methods for microscopy, with a focus on robust transferability, reusable representations, and computational efficiency.

The subproject, which runs from 2025 to 2028, has been awarded 328,500 EUR in funding.

📄 Learn more on the CALM4GRAINS project page.

📄 The official final resolution can be consulted here.

We look forward to contributing to greener and more transferable AI methods for biomedical microscopy within the broader GRAINS coordinated project.

CALM4GRAINS - Cross-domain Adaptation and Learning for Microscopy (2025-2028)

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The CALM4GRAINS subproject - Cross-domain Adaptation and Learning for Microscopy - is part of the coordinated GRAINS initiative (Green Responsible AI for Next-gen Sustainable Bio-Imaging). CALM4GRAINS focuses on improving model transferability across microscopy domains, laboratories, acquisition setups, and downstream tasks while reducing redundant computation.

Led at UPV/EHU by the Computer Vision and Pattern Discovery (CVPD) group, CALM4GRAINS contributes the adaptation and generalization layer of the coordinated project by leveraging reusable representations and foundation-model strategies tailored to biomedical microscopy.

🔬 Scientific Goals

Develop robust cross-domain adaptation and domain generalization methods for microscopy datasets with heterogeneous acquisition conditions.
Reuse representations across datasets and tasks to reduce retraining costs and improve computational and energy efficiency.
Adapt and benchmark foundation-model-based pipelines for microscopy segmentation, detection, and classification.
Improve reproducibility through shared protocols and interoperable software components compatible with open bioimage ecosystems.

🌐 Coordinated Project Context

CALM4GRAINS is Subproject 2 (SP2) within the coordinated project:

GRAINS: Green Responsible AI for Next-gen Sustainable Bio-Imaging
- SP1: GAINS4GRAINS - Green Architectures for Imaging Networks and Sustainability
- SP2: CALM4GRAINS - Cross-domain Adaptation and Learning for Microscopy
- SP3: HEAT4GRAINS - Energy and hardware-efficient neural network training algorithms
- SP4: REACT4GRAINS - Reconfigurable arithmetic and circuits for green AI networks

👥 Project Team

Principal Investigators

Dr. Ignacio Arganda-Carreras (Ikerbasque Research Associate Professor, UPV/EHU; DIPC; Biofisika Institute)
Dr. Fadi Dornaika (Ikerbasque Research Professor, UPV/EHU)

Research Team

Dr. Nagore Barrena (Associate Professor, UPV/EHU)
Dr. Urtzi Ayesta (Ikerbasque Research Professor, UPV/EHU)

Work Team / Collaborators

Dr. Daniel Franco-Barranco (Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Cambridge, UK)
Dr. Estibaliz Gomez de Mariscal (Postdoctoral Researcher, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
Lenka Backová (PhD student, Biofisika Institute)
Aitor González-Marfil (PhD student, Donostia International Physics Center)
Postdoctoral Researcher - to be hired (SP2_Postdoc)
PhD Candidate - to be recruited (SP2_PhD)

🕒 Timeline

Start date: 1 December 2025
End date: 30 November 2028
Duration: 36 months

💰 Funding

Call / Program: MICINN-IA (MICINN-IA25/03) - Research projects in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AIA 2025)
Funding body: State Research Agency (AEI), Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU)
External reference code: AIA2025-164165-C42
Official subproject title: Cross-domain Adaptation and Learning for Microscopy
Total funding granted: 328,500.00 EUR

📄 Project Documentation

Coordinated project: GRAINS (Green Responsible AI for Next-gen Sustainable Bio-Imaging)
Subproject reference: AIA2025-164165-C42

📬 Contacts

For project enquiries, please contact:

Urtzi Ayesta | CVPD Research group