Singapore's Nanyang Technological University and American multinational semiconductor company AMD have decided to collaborate to launch a Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab, which will nurture next-generation tech leaders equipped with the latest industry-driven digital skills.
As per a news release, published by NTU on Friday, December 14 "S$4 million joint Data Science and AI Lab will leverage AMD's deep-learning technologies and NTU's global strengths in machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and data science, to complement the university's Data Science and Artificial Intelligence undergraduate programme."
It also added that the students at NTU will learn about the real world applications such as developing software algorithms used in security fields like identification and motion detection. They will get a huge opportunity to work on big data and analytics which are now frequently used by leading companies.
The students will also get a chance to use AMD's versatile open source software, Radeon Open Compute (ROCm) platform during their training to participate in supercomputing competitions.
"Potential research projects and real-world machine learning and deep learning applications that students are expected to work within the lab will leverage AMD's open software platform for accelerated computing," said NTU.
As per the university, this collaboration will provide the students with local and overseas attachment opportunities with the California based tech Company. AMD's AI and machine learning experts will work closely with NTU professors to conduct joint training and workshop sessions for industry members.
It should be noted that from 2019 academic year, the NTU undergraduates will be eligible to intern at AMD's Shanghai Research and Development Center (SRDC) and the Singapore Product Development Center (SPDC). The university will also support AMD's engineers who wish to pursue PhD programmes through EDB's Industrial Post-graduate Programme (IPP).
Allen Lee, the Corporate Vice President for Asia Datacenter Group, General Manager for China R&D Center, AMD said, "The philosophy behind AMD's open source deep-learning architecture is about flexibility and choice – for developers and academics to have a range of hardware vendor-agnostic tools to innovate at scale."
In addition, he also said, "NTU is the premier institution for artificial intelligence, and we're very excited to bring our technologies to empower the participating students to freely explore the diversity of deep-learning applications."
As per Professor Louis Phee, NTU's Dean for the College of Engineering, this collaboration has highlighted the fact that the university desires to make strong relations with top players of the industry to provide students with industry-relevant education.
"This will not only give them first-hand insights in solving real-world challenges but also give them an edge when navigating today's dynamic workplace environment," he added.
Ling Yuan Chun, Deputy Director, Semiconductors, Singapore Economic Development Board stated that the idea of launching such idea is actually a great example of "how industry and academia can leverage transformative technologies like AI to develop real-world solutions."
He also said that the partnership between AMD and NTU is "testament to the company's confidence in Singapore and the innovation cluster we have here. Such an effort will also deepen Singapore's talent pool for AI, and provide Singaporeans with the necessary skill set to participate in the opportunities that rapid technological adoption is bringing."
