The Technion and Intel to inaugurate joint Center for Artificial Intelligence
The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Intel Corporation inaugurated a new Center for Artificial Intelligence (AI) yesterday, Monday, October 8th. The Center is chartered with advancing research in AI fields and collaboration between Technion and Intel researchers.
Intel’s Dr. Michael Mayberry, chief technology officer, and Naveen Rao, corporate vice president, and general manager of the Artificial Intelligence Products Group represented Intel at the inauguration of the new AI Center. Prof. Boaz Golany, vice president for External Relations and Resource Development, Prof. Wayne Kaplan, executive vice president for Research, Prof. Nahum Shimkin, dean of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Prof. Dan Geiger, dean of the Computer Science Department and Prof. Carmel Domshlak, Dean of the William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, represented the Technion.
Intel and Technion teams
Prof. Shie Mannor from the Technion Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering will head the Center. “The Technion is the leading university in Israel in the field of artificial intelligence and is one of the top ten universities in the world in the field,” Mannor said. “In 2018 the Technion ranked 7th in the CS Rankings: Computer Science Rankings. The Technion has about 20 faculty members whose main field of research is computational learning and another 40 [researchers] are working in related fields. The majority of the researchers come from the Faculty of Computer Science, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, and the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management and some of them are from other faculties such as Medicine and Biology.”
Mannor added: “As part of this collaboration with Intel, the company will support research projects of Technion faculty members engaged in computational learning and artificial intelligence together with Intel researchers. The research will cover a variety of areas, including natural language processing, deep learning and hardware optimization for different learning algorithms.”
(L-R) Naveen G. Rao, Prof. Dan Geiger, Dean of Computer Science Department, Prof. Boaz Golany, Dr. Michael (Mike) C. Mayberry, Dean of the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management Prof. Carmel Domshlak and Dean of The Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering Prof. Nahum Shimkin
Intel Israel CEO Yaniv Garty said, “We are proud of the cooperation with the Technion, which will promote Israeli technology and Intel’s technological leadership in the field of artificial intelligence.”
“Intel is a leader in this field and the research center will help further advance AI innovation. I have no doubt that we will achieve breakthroughs that will lead to significant developments in the coming years. Intel has always maintained a close cooperation with Israeli academia, which has included many contributions, support of teaching programs, scholarships for outstanding students, joint research and more,” he said.
Prof. Boaz Golany, Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development added: “The Technion intends to expand its activities in the fields of machine learning and intelligent technology in the next few years and the joint activity with Intel is one of the first steps in this direction. We are working to raise unprecedented resources to support basic research in the field and in parallel, to work with leading companies such as Intel to promote applications in a wide range of fields including healthcare, autonomous vehicles, smart environments, home, and industrial robots and more.”
Intel and The Technion have maintained close ties for many years. In 2009, Intel awarded The Technion the “Intel Award” in recognition of the university, whose graduates were the founding nucleus of the company’s branch which was established in Haifa in 1974. To date, Intel supports some Technion’s labs and funds many scholarships for students at the Technion, including specifically supporting outstanding students in electrical engineering and computer science.
Head of Intel AI Product Group (AIPG) Naveen G. Rao And Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development Prof. Boaz Golany
Intel CTO and head of Intel Labs Executive Dr. Michael (Mike) C. Mayberry and Vice President for Research Prof. Wayne D. Kaplan