Motorola and its parent company, Google, have created a research agreement with eight universities that includes Texas A&M, the company announced last Wednesday.
The research collaboration with Motorola Mobility’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group includes A&M and the California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and Virginia Tech.
“The multi-university agreement is really the first of its kind,” said Kaigham J. Gabriel, vice president and deputy director of Motorola Mobility’s Advanced Technology and Projects. “Such an agreement has the potential to be a national model for how companies and universities work together to speed innovation and U.S. competitiveness, while staying true to their individual missions and cultures.”
On Friday, Motorola’s “Make With Moto” team came to A&M for a weeklong “MAKEaTHON.” The event placed engineering students on five different teams that came up with everything from bio-feedback clothing to a device that can control a phone with hand gestures using Motorola’s technology.
“The MAKEaTHON was an exceptional experience,” said Mickie Byrd, senior electronic systems engineering major . “The Motorola team was very helpful and receptive to our needs as we converted our ideas into prototypes. With the level of engagement that I experienced, we should see many technological breakthroughs resulting from the partnership with Motorola.”
The Multi-University Research Agreement (MURA) has been in production for the past six months and Motorola representatives came to College Station on Monday to discuss different details of the agreement and assess different areas of research they were thinking about.
“[MURA] was settled at the system level, meaning that they will not only be working with the engineering department, but with all the departments. And not only Texas A&M here in College Station, but with all of our branches,” said Costas Georghiedas, associate dean for research in the College of Engineering.
Monday’s talks focused on the list of areas that Motorola had presented to A&M. Several faculty members including Guofei Gu, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, showed presentations on these different areas.
“The different areas included security, graphic rendering, big data, acoustics/audio and low power consumption,” Gu said. “Different universities have different strengths and combining these different strengths provides a win-win solution for Motorola and the different universities including A&M. Multi-disciplinary research has become a trend globally and if successful, [MURA] will create a good model for future relationships with big companies.”
The agreement will create different research programs that will require different fields from different Universities working on the same or similar projects.
“It will be a bridge to further collaboration with other Universities and their research,” Gu said. “How much competition between Universities will depend on how [Motorola] wants the project to be done, but I don’t see why there would be a need to compete with the other universities. Collaboration will allow all the different strengths to come together and create something new.”
Narasimha Reddy, a professor in the Department Electric and Computer Engineering said based on the match of their research portfolio and Google’s research needs and priorities, the projects could start within a few months.