(From left) Prof Stefan Decker, director of DERI; Minister Richard Bruton TD; Regina Moran, CEO, Fujitsu Ireland; Tatsuo Tomita, president, Fujitsu Laboratories; and Chihiro Atsumi, Japanese Ambassador to Ireland, at Government Buildings in Dublin
Fujitsu Laboratories, a subsidiary of ICT giant Fujitsu, is to begin a significant investment in a research programme with the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), which is based at NUI Galway, Fujitsu Ireland has announced today.
The research will be conducted in the area of networked knowledge. Key focal areas, according to the company, will be identifying new models and commercial opportunities for exploiting static and dynamic data on the internet to make it more valuable to end users.
The programme has been supported by the Government through IDA Ireland and Science Foundation Ireland and it’s hoped the collaboration will result in the creation of high-end research jobs in Ireland as the research progresses.
The announcement was made with Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Minister Richard Bruton, TD, and Ambassador Chihiro Atsumi, the Japanese Ambassador to Ireland at Government Buildings in Dublin.
Tatsuo Tomita, president of Fujitsu Laboratories, said the company aims to enable what he termed a “human-centric intelligent society”.
“Big data will be the foundation for enabling such a society, and we at Fujitsu view as essential the data processing of big data – in other words, the gathering, semantic analysis, and categorisation of big data,” he said.
Tomita said the joint research collaboration with DERI will draw upon the centre’s research resources in the field of the semantic web to offer new R&D opportunities.
Spin-offs for Ireland
Regina Moran, CEO of Fujitsu Ireland, spoke about how the research alliance will have a positive impact for Ireland.
She said the aim of the research programme is to ensure the results it delivers are the “seeds for the innovation” of commercial services and products in Ireland.
“If Ireland is to succeed in being a leader in technology innovation, investment in world-class research programmes, such as this, here in Ireland, are critical. We cannot stand in the wings waiting for innovations elsewhere in the world to reach us, we need to demonstrate leadership,” said Moran.
Semantic web
The research will be led by Prof Stefan Decker, director of DERI at NUI Galway.
Together with his research team, Decker will be investigating models and approaches for integrating and validating data available on the internet.
The overarching aim is to enable innovative applications and businesses to be designed and brought to the market across many industries.
Decker spoke today about how there was a meeting of minds when the DERI team met with Fujitsu.
“Their vision around human-centric computing has great synergies with our research on the semantic web. This programme will create high-end research jobs in Ireland, adding to our team of scientists here. With a strong focus on innovation and research, we expect that more job opportunities will arise as the research progresses.”
This research programme with DERI will begin as of now.
Fujitsu Ireland’s Regina Moran is one of our panelists at the Future Jobs Forum on 19 October, which is being jointly hosted by Silicon Republic and Asia Matters, and will tackle the global battle for talent.
