Image: © Panama/Stock.adobe.com
Chinese tech giant Huawei is to fund the Lero software research centre to the tune of €6m over the next four years.
The SFI research centre Lero is set to receive substantial funding from Huawei. The company announced today (19 December) at Lero’s headquarters at the University of Limerick (UL) that it will invest €6m in a research programme aimed at improving the reliability of software applications.
The funding comes as part of a joint operation between Huawei’s own research centres in Ireland and Sweden. The programme will start in early 2020 and will span four years. It will include researchers from UL, Trinity College Dublin, NUI Galway and Dublin City University.
‘As a company who have a strong record of research-led innovation, we look forward to working with Huawei on this programme’
– PROF BRIAN FITZGERALD
Lero and Huawei expect that the alliance will produce a number of advanced research projects in software engineering and lead to dedicated knowledge transfer workshops and publications in major journals. In August, Huawei said it wanted to invest €70m in Irish R&D over the next three years.
“Huawei is proud to be involved in this programme. The research undertaken by Lero could be used to help guide research and best practice right across the world,” said Yargin Xiao, president of the Huawei Ireland research centre.
“Today’s announcement will give Lero researchers the support they need to further their research into software reliability while providing them with the opportunity to be acknowledged on the international stage.”
Meanwhile, Lero director Prof Brian Fitzgerald added: “There has been a dramatic increase in both the volume and complexity of the software that needs to be produced globally.
“This project will help industry generate the best possible software over the four years of the strategic research partnership. As a company who have a strong record of research-led innovation, we look forward to working with Huawei on this programme.”
At the announcement of its plans to invest in Ireland last August, the company’s rotating chair Guo Ping said Ireland has “some of the best researchers in the world”.
“Our R&D efforts are diverse in Ireland, like software in Dublin and hardware in Cork,” he said. “Ireland has a great opportunity to continue to grow as an economy and become a technological hub.”
