Virginia Tech and Johns Hopkins University are among 17 universities who have agreed to partner with Facebook's Building 8 hardware team. The team is notorious for being secretive about its projects, but some of its developments have included a solar-powered drone, Oculus' wired and mobile VR headsets and a 360-degree camera.
But the B8 team soon realized it needed the help of academia to develop future projects, and, with that, came this new scientific academic research agreement, or SARA, with several major universities. The agreement allows universities to bypass the typical 9-to-12 month time frame it takes to approve or strike one-time research partnerships with Facebook. Thus, SARA allows Facebook to create a more long-term, continuous relationship with universities.
The 17 universities included in the agreement are Virginia Tech, Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Caltech, Rice, UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley, Northeastern, Princeton, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Arizona State University, Texas A&M, Georgia Tech and Canada's University of Waterloo.
Facebook also plans to pay the universities a fee for their labor, according to TechCrunch. The schools will work closely with the team run by Regina Dugan, who formerly ran DARPA in Arlington and served as the head of Google's Advanced Technologies and Projects Group team before joining Facebook.
"APL's scientists and engineers have developed some of the most advanced technologies anywhere," said Ralph Semmel, director of Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in a statement. "This agreement provides an avenue through which we can explore potential applications of these technologies that are complementary to our traditional research areas."
Virginia Tech spokesperson Mark Owczarski told DC Inno that partnering with leading companies, like Facebook, allows the university to work on research that addresses some of the issues the industry is wrestling with right now.
"Virginia Tech, for its part, is a global research leader in 'big data' and data analytics," he said. "We have a long and impressive research portfolio in this area, applied to a variety of research areas in the life sciences and intelligent infrastructure. Our strength in data analytics could potentially be one area that companies like Facebook turn to Virginia Tech for expertise and advice."
Images used via CC BY-SA 3.0 — credit Iracaz
