EBTIC Enjoys Collaboration with the Florida Institute of Human and Machine Cognition

EBTIC an ICT research and innovation center founded by Khalifa University Etisalat and BT and supported by ICT Fund and the Florida Institute of Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that cements several years of collaboration between the two centers and that offers multiple opportunities for researchers and students.

The cooperation between EBTIC and IHMC comes from their common interest in working towards the adoption of big data in advanced predictive analytics and it will focus on driving innovation to tackle key technical challenges in those areas to further advance scientific research and address the needs of their partners.. In addition IHMC and EBTIC have agreed to cooperate in the areas of innovation and research in the information communications and technology sector in the UAE.

IHMC is one of the world leading research centers pioneering technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. In 2015 it won 2nd place at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge a three years global competition aimed at developing semi-autonomous ground robots that could do “complex” tasks in dangerous environments.

Many of its researchers are world leaders in their fields and have occupied senior positions at major organizations such as NASA US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) National Science Foundation and many others. It is a not-for-profit research institute with staff from diverse backgrounds carrying out research in artificial intelligence cognitive science knowledge modeling and sharing adjustable autonomy robotics and exoskeletons cyber security computer-mediated learning systems intelligent data understanding software agents knowledge representation big data and machine learning and many other related areas.

In the past EBTIC’s UAE national researchers have enjoyed internships at IHMC with Ahmed Al Dhanhani and Abdelrahman Almahmoud travelling to Florida in order to participate in research being conducted on tactical networks mobile applications and robot control.

Said Ahmed about his experience “We were part of a team lead by one of the principal investigators in IHMC and we benefited greatly from this internship. IHMC is a well-established research centre and observing how they work from the inside was insightful. We had meetings with different researchers who are highly regarded on their areas and it was interesting to see how the researchers come from very different backgrounds including computer scientists mechanical engineers and medical doctors. We received good exposure on the projects we were working on in collaboration with big names from industry and government. This enhanced our view of the innovative research world.”

Additionally EBTIC hosted at Khalifa University Dr. Bonnie Dorr Associate Director & Senior Research Scientist at IHMC who visited the center and met with researchers in order to discuss potential collaboration in a number of areas including machine learning natural language processing and big data. Additionally an EBTIC team visited IHMC in order to a host a workshop focusing on big data analytics.

“The partnership between EBTIC and IHMC is based on common interest and approaches to innovation and it stands to benefit both our center and the UAE in many ways ” says Dr. Samer Al Samahi Director of EBTIC. “Especially through working together and cooperating in our research endeavors in the fields of big data and advanced analytics and promoting and conducting scientific research relevant to challenges facing Abu Dhabi and the UAE as a whole. I look forward to the continued growth of this partnership and the breakthroughs that will stem from it.”