Nokia Research Center's Newest Lab Opens in Berkeley, California

Nokia has announced an expansion of its global research laboratories with the opening of the Nokia Research Center, Berkeley. Located in close proximity to the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) campus, the new Lab is under the direction of Dr. John Shen who also heads Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto, California.

Nokia Research Center (NRC), now with six labs in eleven locations worldwide, collaborates with universities and other institutes to conduct research.

Working closely with UC Berkeley's research units, NRC Berkeley will explore innovations in many areas including parallel computing. Parallel computing research areas include accelerating the mobile web browser and runtime environments; increasing mobile device performance while lowering power consumption in both active and idle modes; and achieving seamless ubiquitous wireless connectivity and cross-domain interoperability.

"The results of these research areas can greatly improve consumers' mobile device experience particularly in emerging economies where electricity is limited and access to the Internet is primarily or solely via the mobile device," noted John Shen, Laboratory Director, Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto (and Berkeley). "NRC is pleased to provide a laboratory environment that will enable us and UC Berkeley to collaborate in areas that are important to both of us."

Nokia Research Center and UC Berkeley have active research projects underway today including Mobile Millennium, a project that uses mobile phones as sensors to provide enhanced traffic data on major and arterial roads. The new Lab will enable researchers to work more closely together on existing and new projects.

"Nokia is an important partner because we believe applications of the future will be partly on cell phones and partly on Cloud Computing platforms," said David Patterson, UC Berkeley professor of computer science and head of the campus's Parallel Computing Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research project exploring the future of parallel processing. "We look forward to working with Nokia in our exploration of the parallel computing landscape."

Posted to the site on 28th May 2009