'Sony Research Award Program' Expands to Europe as it Enters its Fifth Year

NEW YORK, July 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony announced today that it is now accepting submissions for its Research Award Program, currently in its fifth year.  The program provides universities in the U.S., Canada, and, starting this year, selected European countries*, funding for programs researching emerging and innovative technologies in collaboration with Sony's own research groups.

"For the past four years, the Sony Research Award Program has been an excellent opportunity for top researchers to partner with our world-class engineers to solve real world problems, with both sides benefitting," said Toru Katsumoto, Executive Deputy President, Sony Corporation. "We are excited to now broaden our program to include Europe as it is home to some of the world's most prominent scientists and researchers, and we are hopeful to expand the program to even more regions in the future."  

The Sony Research Award Program is comprised of two awards – the Faculty Innovation Award and the Focused Research Award.  Both awards are coordinated by Sony's R&D Center and may fall within three broad subject categories: Information Technology, Devices & Materials, and Life Sciences. The awards create new opportunities for faculty members to engage in cutting-edge research, leading to the introduction of breakthrough technologies.

The Faculty Innovation Award grants up to $100,000 USD to principal investigators for one year, with the possibility of an extension, for research projects that fall within Sony's current research interests.  This award will help Sony catalyze and expand the creation of new concepts by building on existing research through university partnerships.

The Focused Research Award provides support for up to $150,000 USD for one year, with the possibility of an extension, to conduct research in the areas of Sony's immediate interest.  Through close collaboration with Sony's own in-house research team, academic faculties can explore new and evolving research.

"Partnering with Sony under the Sony Research Award Program has given our students and post-doctoral fellows a rare opportunity: the chance to work on truly relevant problems that are slated to have major commercial and societal impact," said Professor Ted Sargent of the University of Toronto. "At every stage, Sony has been a thoughtful and strategic advisor on how to ensure our project has the greatest implications both to other scholars in our interdisciplinary field, and also on engineers at the vanguard of industrial R&D and innovation."

"For the past year we have been working with Sony's research award program," said Professor Sebastian Scherer of Carnegie Mellon University.  "It has been very exciting for us to be able to collaborate with researchers from Sony and has been especially rewarding to join forces to advance the state-of-the-art in dynamic visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)."

Proposals may be submitted by university principal investigators who may be assistant, associate, or full professors.  Objectives, publication terms, and patent terms will be mutually agreed upon between the awarded institution and Sony.  The deadline to submit applications is September 15, 2020 and award nominees will be notified around March 2021.

For more information about the grants, as well as a list of previous award recipients, please visit the program page on 'sony.com' [https://www.sony.com/research-award-program].

*European countries included in the Program are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom

SOURCE Sony