It is easy to get involved in the Cognitive Systems Institute Group.
Some resources and background to share with faculty who are looking for alignment opportunities:
General resources to share with faculty can be found at this website, and discussions on LinkedIn group:
Cognitive Systems Institute Group website: http://www.cognitive-science.info
Cognitive Systems Institute Group LinkedIn discussions: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Cognitive-Systems-Institute-6729452
More specifically regarding awards, which are more competitive, and go to the most aligned projects, our global university programs team is making small IBM awards to faculty who are submitting larger proposals for government/foundation funding that are aligned with IBM.
Criteria include:
(1) Focus: Here is what is being ramped up. Awards to faculty working on building cognitive assistants for some occupation as part of a smart service systems, or the cognitive computing componentry underlying those cognitive assistants (i.e., focus)
See – http://cognitive-science.info/award-recipients/
(2) Leverage: Here is what the review board is weighting heavily, besides good people doing good work in good places, the dominant criterion is leverage. Restricting to faculty who are pursuing significant follow-on funding from government or foundation funding agencies (i.e., leverage).
See – http://cognitive-science.info/about-grants/where-to-apply/
(3) Ecosystem Outcomes: Potential for increase in startups built on the Watson Bluemix platform, and university cognitive computing componentry that is accessible as part of Bluemix. For example, see these cognitive computing componentry (Watson Services on Bluemix):
See – https://ace.ng.bluemix.net/#/solutions/solution=watson
(4) Research Outcomes: Similar to ecosystem outcomes (components on Bluemix), but also includes co-publications with IBM Researchers regarding progress on cognitive research grand challenge.
See – http://cognitive-science.info/research-challenges/debater/
http://cognitive-science.info/research-challenges/
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Cognitive-Systems-Institute-6729452
http://cognitive-science.info/
In sum, we are most interested in universities that are developing cognitive computing componentry and cognitive assistants that solve cognitive research grand challenges, grow the Watson Services on Bluemix ecosystem, leverage government/foundation funding sources, and can be seeded with small IBM awards in our focus area. We are interested in other win-win’s as well, but this is our focus for university cognitive awards.