Carnegie Mellon’s Silicon Valley Campus Partners with Institut Telecom to Expand Research and Educational Opportunities

June 11, 2010

Contact: Chriss Swaney
Carnegie Mellon University
412.268.5776

PITTSBURGH-Carnegie Mellon University's Silicon Valley campus is partnering with the prestigious Institut Telecom, a consortium of European higher education and research institutes involved in telecommunications and mobility research.

           
"We are extremely bullish about this new partnership as we continue to make our Silicon Valley campus more global and industry-friendly," said Martin Griss, director of the Silicon Valley campus and co-director of the CyLab Mobility Research Center.

           
Institut Telecom inaugurated a new Institut Telecom Silicon Valley on May 11 with a three-continent video teleconference of a joint ribbon cutting at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley and the launch of a series of monthly Institut Telecom alumni meetings.

           
Griss said the joint Carnegie Mellon and Institut Telecom working groups have identified several areas of potential research collaboration with American academic and industrial sectors, including biometric security technology, microchip cards, mobile applications and globalization. Both partners also will collaborate to host the international MobiCASE conference in Santa Clara in October.

           
Philippe Letellier, deputy research director at Institut Telecom, said they are excited to partner with Carnegie Mellon to push open innovation between California and Europe, initiating collaboration between large companies and small businesses from both Carnegie Mellon and Institut Telecom. They intend to support several small French innovative companies seeking to come to Mountain View, Calif., the hottest site of innovation in California. Letellier is responsible for international development, valuation, technology transfer and partnerships.

           
Because Carnegie Mellon's Silicon Valley campus has a suite of research projects similar to those also under way at Institut Telecom, the match is a perfect mix of innovation and collaboration and a platform for future entrepreneurship, according to Griss, an associate dean of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon.

            
"Mobile computing is dynamic and ubiquitous and we have to be prepared to understand, measure and innovate to enhance the experience and impact organizations are having with all these new mobile technologies," Griss said. "The new business startup activity in this area of mobility has been exceptional and we are here to help industry leverage those technologies."

           
Startups are also the lifeblood of Institut Telecom, which has 5,400 students and 650 professors. It spins off 65 startups a year from its five incubators.

           
Also in May, Carnegie Mellon researchers at Silicon Valley launched an initiative to address the need for industry-wide, globally accepted measures for calculating the benefits and risks of cloud-computing services, and a disaster management initiative to develop emergency service technologies in the public interest.