Working with K2I

The Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology (K2I) at Rice University can work with industrial partners in a variety of ways. First, we encourage our partners who are interested in a specific K2I research area to sponsor a K2I research grant or contract. Through this model, companies can conduct research in emerging information technologies and computational engineering without making the major investment required to support an "in-house" research project. K2I will work with its industrial partners to develop well-defined, jointly agreed-to research projects with milestones and deliverables. K2I encourages ongoing dialogue, technical exchanges, status reviews, and if possible, joint participation between Rice researchers and students and industrial engineers. Such a research grant can also facilitate summer internships for involved graduate students, thus allowing continued focused research both at Rice and with the participating industrial partners.

Second, K2I and the industrial partner can work with a government agency via a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), or Advanced Technology Project (ATP) joint proposal response. In this way, joint research can be conducted and additional government support can maximize the research dollars of the university and the industrial partner. K2I and its affiliated labs and centers have a track record of successful joint projects with industrial partners (such as Texas Instruments, Schlumberger, Compaq, and Nokia) and major government labs including NSF centers, DOE national labs and research groups in DOD and NASA. K2I has worked successfully with industry through both of these models.

K2I understands the importance of leveraging existing research to support future activities and needs. We are committed to continued work with industrial partners and government agencies. Our strategy is to maximize existing research and funding and to build future research on the foundation being laid today. If K2I research is sponsored by a particular industrial partner, that partner obtains the benefits of the research first. In addition, K2I will work with industry and government on issues of intellectual property rights, proprietary information, and technology transfer requirements. K2I is flexible and willing to work to meet the needs of its research partners.

In addition to specific research grants, contracts, and joint proposals, K2I encourages its industrial partners to become corporate affiliates to the engineering department or departments that best reflect a firm's research interests. The primary purpose of the affiliates programs is to establish technical relationships between K2I researchers and their counterparts in industry. The corporate affiliates program facilitates a fruitful exchange between researchers in the laboratory and practitioners in the field. The corporate affiliate is able to keep up to date on the latest non-proprietary research through visits to the K2I centers and labs, an annual visit by a K2I faculty member to the member's workplace to make presentations or to consult, and mailings of the latest technical reports and papers of interest. This program also allows the industrial partner the opportunity to influence the direction of future research, to meet and establish relationships with graduating students for summer and permanent new hire prospects, and to attend K2I and departmental speaker programs and workshops.

Industrial Partner Programs:

Computer Science Corporate Affiliates
Electrical and Computer Engineering Industrial Affiliates
Computational and Applied Math Corporate Affiliates Program

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