UCD and Samsung announce joint AI research project

The €4 million project aims to allow Samsung to use the increased expertise to create products

flickr: leandrociuffo

A €4 million artificial intelligence (AI) research project was launched at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at University College Dublin (UCD) in collaboration with Samsung Electronics Co.

The project aims to increase expertise in deep data science and AI across user modelling, machine learning and recommender systems at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, allowing Samsung to avail of the enhanced expertise to create products.

The three-year undertaking will be led by Professor Barry Smyth, Dr Aonghus Lawlor and Associate Professor Neil Hurley of the UCD School of Computer Science and will involve a team of over 25 researchers and staff from both Samsung and UCD. The project is also expected to create 12 new research posts at UCD.

Speaking after the announcement, Baekjun Lim, Vice-President and Head of the Data Intelligence Lab at Samsung Electronics, said: “Today people are searching less, with recommendation features filling the gap. Given this environment, we are extremely excited about the opportunity to work with world-class experts in the field of recommendation systems at UCD, and we expect to see impactful results from this collaboration.”

Professor Barry Smyth, Digital Professor of Computer Science, UCD School of Computer Science, also spoke about the project and said, “Ireland has an excellent reputation in machine learning and recommender systems and the Insight Centre for Data Analytics is delighted to be working with Samsung to help bring our innovative technologies out of the lab to Samsung devices and customer-base.

The Insight Centre for Data Analytics is a joint initiative between a number of institutions including UCD, National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), University College Cork (UCC), and Dublin City University (DCU). The €75 million centre is funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and other industry partners.

The announcement from UCD comes one month after Trinity announced a research collaboration with information technology firm, Huawei, also focusing on the field of artificial intelligence.

Michael Gilna

Michael Gilna is a former Investigations Editor of Trinity News.