InterDigital (News - Alert), a provider of wireless technologies has just launched a new engineering competition called InterDigital Innovation Challenge (IC).
Launched in collaboration with the University of California, the San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), the competition aims to encourage innovations in the field of wireless technology.
In a press release, InterDigital announced that the IC is open to individuals or teams from any North American college or university. In order to take part in the contest, participants are required to submit a proposal explaining the technical and commercial viability of their innovations in one of the specified fields. The cutoff date for proposal submission is March 30, 2012.
Participants can send their proposals in for areas which include radio signal propagation and processing, radio modem innovations, radio network management and systems innovations, compression and data management techniques, energy improvement in radio processing and/or wireless and network virtualization.
The submissions will then be evaluated by an eight member judging panel,who are a mixture of thought leaders within academia and the technology industry.
Social media is also going to play a big role in the selection of the winners. Participants are encouraged to harness the power of social media to compete for the competition's popular vote. The individual or team who wins the popular vote in the first round will automatically go to the final round, while the winner of the popular vote in the final round will receive a $5,000 bonus.
A $100,000 cash prize will be given to the winning team or individual.
InterDigital's President and Chief Executive Officer William J. Merritt expressed his hope that the challenge will be able to generate a number of technical breakthroughs and fresh thinking that will help shape the future of wireless.
“We have watched agencies like DARPA adopt challenge awards as the means to stimulate creativity and we are delighted that InterDigital has chosen to provide resources to run a similar process focused on wireless,” director of the UCSD division of Calit2 and IC Challenge Chair Ramesh Rao explained in a statement.
Madhubanti Rudra is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Jamie Epstein