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InterDigital Updates on Innovation Challenge
[April 13, 2012]

InterDigital Updates on Innovation Challenge


Apr 13, 2012 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) -- InterDigital and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology at the University of California, San Diego announced the successful completion of the first phase of the InterDigital Innovation Challenge, a student technology engineering competition.



According to a release, despite the very challenging nature of wireless engineering, the competition attracted 15 entries from universities in the United States and Canada.

The group said the just-concluded submission phase of the Innovation Challenge drew proposals from teams at Stanford University, Columbia University, Rutgers University, Drexel University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of California campuses in San Diego, Berkeley and Irvine, Canada's Waterloo University and Universite Laval, and the Ohio State University, among others.


Teams were required to submit technical proposals in the areas of radio signal propagation and processing; radio modem innovations; energy improvement in radio processing; radio network management and systems innovations; compression and data management techniques, or wireless and network virtualization.

"The tremendous response, and the high technical level of the submissions, underscore the value of partnering with Calit2 to create this competition," said Naresh Soni, Chief Technology Officer at InterDigital. "Development of leading-edge wireless networking solutions is very, very challenging. We at InterDigital understand this, our business is based on solving those technical challenges, and as a result we're pleased to support such development via this competition. It's gratifying to see that support rewarded, and to see that the emerging research talent for addressing those critical issues is so robust." "I am pleased to note the participation of teams from many of the prominent wireless centers around the country," said Ramesh Rao, Director of the UCSD division of Calit2. "The period of public voting will draw further attention to the InterDigital Innovation Challenge." The judging panel for the competition includes Lawrence Larson, Dean of the Brown University School of Engineering; Dipankar Raychaudhuri, Rutgers School of Engineering Professor and WINLAB Director; Jerry Gibson, UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering Professor; Arogyaswami Paulraj, Stanford University Professor Emeritus; Hamid Jafarkhani, UC Irvine Engineering Professor and Director of the Center for Pervasive Communications and Computing; Michael Robertson, founder and CEO of MP3Tunes; Martha Dennis, telecommunications entrepreneur and venture capitalist; as well as Soni and Dr. Rao.

The winners of the competition will be announced Sept. 21, at GigaOM's flagship Mobilize event in San Francisco (event.gigaom.com/mobilize/). Participants in the InterDigital Innovation Challenge are vying for $175,000 in total awards.

InterDigital develops fundamental wireless technologies that are at the core of mobile devices, networks, and services worldwide.

The UC San Diego Division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, together with Calit2's division at U.C. Irvine, houses more than 1,000 researchers across the two campuses, organized around more than 50 projects on the future of telecommunications and information technology and how these technologies will transform a range of applications important to the California economy and its citizens' quality of life.

More information: www.calit2.net www.interdigital.com www.interdigital.com ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected]))

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