By John Ribeiro
IDG News Service
IBM India Software Labs (ISL) has set up the IBM Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) in Bangalore to promote co-operation in research between the company and key engineering institutes in India. The new centre is one of eight worldwide.
“Over the past 13 years, the IBM Centers for Advanced Studies, beginning in Toronto, have engaged in hundreds of research projects with thousands of students and professors from around the world,” said Gabby Silberman, CAS program director at IBM Corp. “The expansion to new sites reflects the need to establish co-operative research partnerships globally, closer to the universities and the development work being done in those respective countries.”
The relationship with academic researchers will benefit IBM and the researchers, said Uday Shukla, director of ISL. “University researchers and students provide unique problem-solving approaches to tackle the challenges technology developers are facing today. CAS assists them in understanding where their research activities can be directed, and eventually turned into strategic products, to meet the market requirements today,” Shukla said.
Even before the formation of CAS in India, IBM India already had some researchers from universities in India working on projects in grid computing, Linux and algorithms for life science applications.
Initiated in 1990 as part of the IBM Toronto Software Lab, the CAS program was established to provide a link between academia and industry. IBM’s other CAS sites are located at Austin, Texas, and Raleigh, North, Carolina, in the U.S.; Ottawa and Toronto in Canada; Dublin, Ireland; Barcelona, Spain, and Australia. The CAS in Bangalore will focus on technology development in life sciences, autonomic computing, Web technology standards, pervasive and wireless computing, and grid computing.
ISL, in Bangalore and Pune, works with IBM labs worldwide to develop, enhance and support key IBM products and technologies. ISL plays a major role in IBM’s global Linux initiative and has established a Linux Technology Center in Bangalore.
