Imperial College

A collaborative approach

Imperial College, London (ICL) is a public research university which specialises in science, engineering, medicine and business. Formally part of the University of London it became fully independent in 2007. In January 2014 the College announced its intention to work with Huawei to build a new Science Innovation Laboratory. Its purpose will be to bring experts from across ICL’s various faculties together with Huawei’s research teams to develop new applications in fields such as smart cities, energy and healthcare. It will also be the primary major corporate partnership within the College’s Data Science Institute which was set up to cultivate multidisciplinary collaborations between its academic experts and research partners to develop new big data technologies.

Investing for the future

The decision to build the new laboratory follows the signing of a 2013 Memorandum of Understanding between the two organisations, under which they agreed to look at opportunities for collaboration. For Huawei it is a continuation of a global commitment to innovation and research and development, something in which, for more than a decade, it has annually invested over ten percent of its global revenue.

In setting up the new laboratory, Huawei will invest in cutting-edge equipment including next-generation cloud computing servers, a research and innovation fund, and will help to fund the ongoing operational costs. The innovation laboratory will be committed to ‘Big Data’ related research, including such areas as deep learning, Time series analysis, Stream/ High frequent data analysis and health- care. Its overriding objective is to achieve potential breakthroughs in the theoretical research of Big Data and build an academic and industry-wide reputation with a world-class research team. It will be based at Imperial West, a new campus on the old BBC site in White City, in London.

Leading the way

Leading the way MP commented: “Science and research are major contributors to the UK economy and our Universities are central to ensuring that we have the skills in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) that we need to compete in the global economy. Big data technology is one of the areas where UK universities can take the lead in research and development and that is why I welcome the announcement of the collaboration between Imperial and Huawei.” For both partners, the creation of the laboratory will also mark a major milestone in the development of their future growth strategies. “Investing in innovation is central to Huawei’s business strategy and this exciting collaboration helps us stay at the cutting edge of data science developments. Imperial College is a global institution with unrivalled knowledge in this field.

By bringing together its experts and our engineers we believe we can create new products and services that will harness the huge potential of big data. “This collaboration with Imperial also bolsters the wider partnership programme we have with British universities, which includes working with other institutions around the UK on the 5G technologies that will revolutionise how we communicate in the future,” explains William Xu, Executive Board Director and Chief Strategy Marketing Officer, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. Professor Yike Guo, Director of the Data Science Institute at Imperial College London, concludes: “Imperial’s Data Science Institute is a focal point for global collaborations with governments, industry and the academic community.

The Imperial- Huawei Data Science Innovation Lab shows how collaboration between academia and industry can drive innovations in big data to benefit all of our lives. Huawei and Imperial are world-leaders in their fields, with a series of complementary strengths. We look forward to turning our ambitious vision for this collaboration into reality.”