Jitendra Malik
Chair, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
University of California, Berkeley

The Intel Research Berkeley lab has enabled us to pursue certain research projects which are at scale such that they cannot be done solely at a university, such as sensor networks and PlanetLab. By collaborating with the Intel lab on these projects, we have been able to expand the research and accomplish something that just couldn't have been done at UC Berkeley, given our constraints.

Both of these projects will have a big impact on the world. Sensor net technology is already being used in applications such as monitoring of buildings and ecosystems-applications that align with the agenda of CITRIS [Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society]. PlanetLab, a collaboration that involves many other universities as well as UC Berkeley, is promoting systems research into planetary scale services and will eventually have a major impact on what we use the Internet for.

Another contribution of the Intel lab is in the area of teaching. With the presence of the lab, we have access to a certain number of distinguished researchers who will occasionally offer courses on campus. I see this as a good thing, because it gives our students access to a greater variety of courses. These courses, which typically are at the advanced graduate level, provide students an introduction into an active area of research and an entree into a subfield.

Teaching at UC Berkeley complement's the Intel lab's research mission, because the way graduate students move into research often is through advanced level courses. The availability of Intel researchers who can teach or co-teach such courses on campus makes it easier for them to get students involved in their projects.

The Open and Collaborative Research model is essential to us. Often when students do research at companies it is in the context of a summer project or internship. The work is proprietary and cannot be used as part of a Ph.D. thesis. This limits the size of a project that a student could do in collaboration with an industrial research lab. Through the OCR model, the Intel lab gives students an opportunity to do more extensive work that contributes to a broad research goal and which can be incorporated into their theses.