• The project will have investments of up to US$ 20 million and a maximum duration of 10 years;
• Collaboration will allow advances in Artificial Intelligence research for different market segments;
• New Center will be installed at InovaUSP, in São Paulo.
IBM and FAPESP (São Paulo State Research Support Foundation) announce the University of São Paulo (USP) as a partner institution selected to host the most advanced Artificial Intelligence Engineering Research Center in Brazil. The research will be applied to different market segments, with a focus on natural resources, agribusiness, environment, finance and health, creating significant scientific advances and training researchers and professionals in AI. The new AI Center will be part of the Innovation Center InovaUSP, located in Cidade Universitária, in São Paulo. The center's activities are scheduled to start in early 2020.
With financing of up to 10 years, IBM and FAPESP will each reserve up to US$ 500 thousand annually to implement the program, which will have periodic evaluations of the Center's activities. USP, in turn, will invest up to US$ 1 million per year in physical facilities, laboratories, teachers, technicians, administrators to manage the Center, among others. The definition of the space construction schedule and other details of the project will be defined in an agreement that should be signed by the end of 2019.
The publicly announced edict had the proposals analyzed with the help of international experts, chosen jointly by IBM and Fapesp. Among the criteria taken into account in the evaluation were the adequate composition of teams of researchers and professionals assigned to the administration and management of the project, in addition to the elaboration of an advanced and original research plan, both nationally and internationally.
This is the largest partnership in Brazil between an IT company and the academic sector for collaboration in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and will bring together the knowledge of scientists, teachers and students to carry out research and joint projects. The AI Center will also be the first in Latin America to be part of the IBM AI Horizons Network (AIHN), created in 2016 to promote integration and collaboration between the world's leading universities, IBM students and researchers committed to accelerating the application of AI to some of the biggest global challenges, such as healthcare, image processing and recognition, machine learning, natural language processing and related technologies.
"The creation of this center with USP is a very big milestone for research in Brazil and will allow us to have students, researchers and other professionals engaged in an area that has been gaining more and more strategic relevance in the world, allowing for a scientific agenda and significant advances ", says Ulisses Mello, director of the Research Laboratory at IBM Brasil. "We will also have a much greater exchange of ideas with researchers from all over the world, expanding the solution of decisive problems simultaneously for science and the market and bringing excellent results".
According to Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, scientific director of FAPESP, the collaboration will be effective and not just contracting research by IBM. "This is because IBM has a team of first-rate researchers in São Paulo, in addition to researchers in other locations. The plan presented by USP combines research at the frontier of knowledge, and of interest to IBM, with the training of human resources, so necessary for the development of Brazil ", he stressed.
According to Fabio Gagliardi Cozman, director of the AI Center and professor at USP, the project aims to take artificial intelligence research to a new level. "We intend that the Center's activities contribute to placing the country on the frontier of this area, training professionals and entrepreneurs, and that they encourage debate in society about how to use this technology in the most positive way possible", he commented.
Spotlight
Created in 1934, USP is one of four public universities maintained by the state government of São Paulo. Recently it was elected one of the best universities in the world, according to the global report QS World University Rankings 2020. The annual study considers nine questions, among them the academic reputation of the institutions, based on the report of 94 thousand academics, and the number of citations from universities in scientific research, according to the total number of professors.
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