Nokia, MIT to Open Research Center

Nokia will open a research center near the MIT campus in January to study new areas for mobile technology, the company said on Thursday. The center would be a partnership with the university's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

"For Nokia, this is a fresh approach to our research collaboration with universities," said Dr. Bob Iannucci, head of Nokia Research Center. "Bringing together the collective expertise of MIT and Nokia in mobile computing and communications provides a vehicle for rapidly generating new concepts and bringing innovations to the marketplace on a large scale."

The company says much of the work done by the new research center will center around making handheld wireless devices part of an "ecosystem" of information and services. Work will also be done on interfaces and platforms, and to make devices more intuitive.

In total, 20 researchers from both MIT and Nokia will staff the center. Dr. James Hicks will head the MIT office. Nokia has wasted no time putting the researchers to work; five projects have already been planned.

CSAIL says this partnership with Nokia is different from other industry-university alliances. "The joint laboratory with Nokia will bring a dynamic group of scientists into close physical proximity in an open, creative and dynamic environment," Professor Rodney Brooks, director of CSAIL, said in a statement.

The partnership is not the first time the two groups have worked together. Nokia and MIT also join up for the Oxygen Alliance, a project aimed at creating new types of computers.