An Open Collaborative Model: The Intel Research Berkeley Experience

Intel Research Berkeley was the first of four Intel laboratories created to combine aspects of both academic and industrial research environments. In addition to the Intel Research / UC Berkeley Lab, similar labs have been established at the University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon, and Cambridge. Each lab is a hybrid that bears some resemblance to both academic and industrial research, but in reality is quite unique. On the occasion of the Berkeley lab’s third anniversary, I’ll reflect on a number of factors that contribute to its remarkable success, as well as some that continue to present challenges. The talk will cover motivations behind the hybrid structure, management and organizational issues, how the research agenda is established, intellectual property mechanisms, and illustrative examples of individual collaborative research projects. I’ll also give my personal opinions on the challenges other companies face when attempting to establish similar institutions.

Presenter(s)

Together with Joseph Hellerstein, Kurt Brown co-directs Intel Research Berkeley. His research interests focus on information storage, retrieval and analysis, and how to make those tasks transparent, easy to use, and self-managing. Prior to Intel, Kurt founded and led 64K, a provider of database search middleware, and ELetter, a web-enabled direct mail service for small businesses. He is a 13 year veteran of IBM, where he worked on the MVS and DB2 product lines, in addition to assignments at Yorktown and Almaden Research. Kurt received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, for work on what is now commonly referred to as "autonomic" resource allocation in database systems.