The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Intel Corporation inaugurated a new Center for Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Monday, October 8. The Center, which will be located on the Technion’s Haifa campus, is chartered with advancing research in AI fields and collaboration between Technion and Intel researchers.

Dr. Michael Mayberry, Intel’s chief technology officer, and Naveen Rao, corporate vice president and general manager of the Artificial Intelligence Products Group, represented Intel at the inauguration of the new AI Center. Prof. Boaz Golany, vice president for External Relations and Resource Development, Prof. Wayne Kaplan, executive vice president for Research, Prof. Nahum Shimkin, dean of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Prof. Dan Geiger, dean of the Computer Science Department and Prof. Carmel Domshlak, Dean of the William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, represented the Technion.

The Center will be headed by Prof. Shie Mannor from the Technion’s Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

“The Technion is Israel’s leading university in the field of artificial intelligence, and one of the top ten universities in AI in the world,” said Mannor. “The Technion, which in 2018 ranked 7th in the CS Rankings: Computer Science Rankings, has about 20 faculty members whose main field of research is computational learning and another 40 researchers working in related fields. The majority of the researchers come from the Faculty of Computer Science, the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, and the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management. We also have others from faculties such as Medicine and Biology.”

“As part of this collaboration with Intel, the company will support research projects of Technion faculty members engaged in computational learning and artificial intelligence together with Intel researchers,” added Mannor. “The research will cover a variety of areas, including natural language processing, deep learning and hardware optimization for different learning algorithms.”

Intel Israel CEO Yaniv Garty said: “We are proud of the cooperation with the Technion, which will promote Israeli technology and Intel’s technological leadership in the field of artificial intelligence.”

“Intel is a leader in this field and the research center will help further advance AI innovation. I have no doubt that we will achieve breakthroughs that will lead to significant developments in the coming years. Intel has always maintained close cooperation with Israeli academia, which has included many contributions, support of teaching programs, scholarships for outstanding students, joint research and more,” he said.

According to Prof. Boaz Golany, Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development: “The Technion intends to expand its activities in the fields of machine learning and intelligent technology in the next few years and the joint activity with Intel is one of the first steps in this direction. We are working to raise unprecedented resources to support basic research in the field and in parallel, to work with leading companies such as Intel to promote applications in a wide range of fields including health care, autonomous vehicles, smart environments, home and industrial robots and more.”

Intel and The Technion have maintained close ties for many years. In 2009, Intel awarded the Technion the “Intel Award” in recognition of the university whose graduates were the founding nucleus of the company’s branch established in Haifa in 1974. To date, Intel supports some Technion labs and funds numerous student scholarships at the Technion, including specifically supporting outstanding students in electrical engineering and computer science.

For more than a century, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology has pioneered in science and technology education and delivered world-changing impact. Proudly a global university, the Technion has long leveraged boundary-crossing collaborations to advance breakthrough research and technologies. Now with a presence in three countries, the Technion will prepare the next generation of global innovators. Technion people, ideas and inventions make immeasurable contributions to the world, innovating in fields from cancer research and sustainable energy to quantum computing and computer science to do good around the world.

The American Technion Society supports visionary education and world-changing impact through the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Based in New York City, we represent thousands of US donors, alumni and stakeholders who invest in the Technion’s growth and innovation to advance critical research and technologies that serve the State of Israel and the global good. Over more than 75 years, our nationwide supporter network has funded new Technion scholarships, research, labs, and facilities that have helped deliver world-changing contributions and extend Technion education to campuses in three countries.