MUNICH, February 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ —

Google and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have announced a long-term partnership. The cooperation in Munich will be based on research and innovation in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics. As a “TUM Partner of Excellence“, Google will also donate 1 million euros to the TUM University Foundation, primarily to support talented young researchers. Google is the first non-European company to become an official “Partner of Excellence“ for TUM. 

TUM and Google signed a master agreement today for joint research projects. A key aspect of these activities will be artificial intelligence, including the promotion of innovation. UnternehmerTUM, Center for Innovation and Business Creation at TUM and Germany’s leading start-up incubator, recently launched the “AppliedAI Initiative” to support founders and companies in developing and especially applying artificial intelligence. Google will invest an additional amount of around 250,000 euros in this initiative over the next three years through its Munich office in the form of direct funding, material resources and personnel.

Partnership in the “home country of all industries” 

“Automation and robotics are key elements of the fourth industrial revolution that we are currently experiencing through advances in artificial intelligence. The concept of Industry 4.0 was developed here in Germany, the home country of all industries. We’re delighted with the opportunity to work in this important area in our partnership with TUM and UnternehmerTUM,” said Eric Schmidt, the long-serving Executive Chairman and Technical Advisor of Alphabet Inc. Schmidt, who was in Munich to announce the new partnership, joined TUM President Prof. Wolfgang A. Herrmann in addressing around 1,000 students at the TUM Speakers Series as a side-event of the Munich Security Conference. The former Google CEO gave a talk on technology and innovation and afterwards engaged in discussions with students.

“Robotics and artificial intelligence will fundamentally transform all aspects of our lives,” said Prof. Herrmann. “Our mission as a university is to think far into the future and to shape technological change so that it serves the common good. We are therefore delighted that we will be working together with one of the world’s most innovative and visionary companies. The demonstration of trust by Google in the form of substantial funding for young scientists is an excellent start to this partnership.” With its University Foundation, established in 2010, TUM is a trailblazer in endowment fundraising among German universities. Around 120 companies and individuals have contributed to the endowment, which currently amounts to approximately 42 million euros. The proceeds serve in particular to foster outstanding talent at the university.

Isar Valley meets Silicon Valley 

With TUM and Google, the up-and-coming Isar Valley is teaming up with one of the top companies from Silicon Valley. The arrangement will bring together two partners already known for excellent research in artificial intelligence and machine learning as well as robotics. TUM has an international reputation for the close and intelligent networking of engineering with the natural sciences and medicine as well as social sciences. A new interdisciplinary research center is currently being established with the Munich School of Robotics and Machine Intelligence, headed by Prof. Sami Haddadin, who recently won the German President’s Award for Innovation in Science and Technology. TUM’s other major strength is the conversion of research into market-ready innovations. Every year TUM spawns more than 70 spinoff companies.

Among Google’s German locations, Munich is second only to Hamburg. The company has its own office in the Bavarian capital since 2006. A new development center, which opened in 2016, already has more than 500 employees. Its main activities include the development of software products for data protection, data security and cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI). TUM and Google have been engaged in other cooperative activities for years. In the field of augmented reality, for example, a joint team developed ScanComplete, a method for the automatic completion and semantic analysis of 3D scans of enclosed spaces. Google has also been engaged in a research partnership on AI with the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence since 2015.

About TUM 

The Technical University of Munich (TUM) is one of Europe’s leading research universities, with around 550 professors, 41,000 students, and 10,000 academic and non-academic staff. Its focus areas are the engineering sciences, natural sciences, life sciences and medicine, combined with economic and social sciences. TUM acts as an entrepreneurial university that promotes talents and creates value for society. In that it profits from having strong partners in science and industry. It is represented worldwide with the TUM Asia campus in Singapore as well as offices in Beijing, Brussels, Cairo, Mumbai, San Francisco, and São Paulo. Nobel Prize winners and inventors such as Rudolf Diesel, Carl von Linde, and Rudolf Mößbauer have done research at TUM. In 2006 and 2012 it won recognition as a German “Excellence University.” In international rankings, TUM regularly places among the best universities in Germany.

About Google 

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Through products and platforms like Search, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google Play, Chrome and YouTube, Google plays an important role in the daily lives of billions of people and has become one of the world’s best-known companies. Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.

Contact:
Dr. Ralf Bremer
Google Germany GmbH
Tel: +49(0)30-303-98-63-58
Email: rbremer@google.com
Unter den Linden 14 // 10117 Berlin

Dr. Ulrich Marsch
Head of Corporate Communications Center
Technical University of Munich
Tel: +49-89-289-22779
ulrich.marsch@tum.de

SOURCE Google and Technical University of Munich (TUM)