The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Intel Corporation opened a new chapter by launching the Center for Artificial Intelligence at Technion’s Haifa campus.

The Technion is already Israel’s leading university in the field of AI — and one of the top 10 AI universities in the world. The new center will supercharge those efforts, advancing research in AI fields and promoting collaboration between Technion and Intel researchers. It will be led by Prof. Shie Mannor from the Technion’s Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

As part of this collaboration, Intel will bring together Technion faculty and Intel researchers to support Technion research ranging from natural language processing to deep learning and hardware optimization for different learning algorithms.

Intel and the Technion have worked closely together for years. In 2009, Intel awarded Technion the “Intel Award” in recognition of the graduates who were the founding nucleus of Intel’s Haifa branch. In addition to the center, Intel supports some Technion labs and funds numerous student scholarships, including supporting outstanding students in electrical engineering and computer science.

The partnership is expected to lead to significant breakthroughs in AI technology in the coming years — and promote Israel’s role as a technological powerhouse to the world. But it’s only the first of many steps the Technion is taking to expand its work in machine learning and intelligent technology in the next few years.

The Technion is in the midst of raising unprecedented resources to support research in the field and secure partnerships 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.