Research & Academics

Working with CITI

The Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI) at Rice University can work with industrial partners in a variety of ways. First, we encourage our partners who are interested in a specific CITI research area to sponsor a CITI research grant or contract. Through this model, companies can conduct research in emerging information technologies and computational engineering without making the major investment required to support an "in-house" research project. CITI will work with its industrial partners to develop well-defined, jointly agreed-to research projects with milestones and deliverables. CITI encourages ongoing dialogue, technical exchanges, status reviews, and if possible, joint participation between Rice researchers and students and industrial engineers. Such a research grant can also facilitate summer internships for involved graduate students, thus allowing continued focused research both at Rice and with the participating industrial partners.

Second, CITI and the industrial partner can work with a government agency via a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), or Advanced Technology Project (ATP) joint proposal response. In this way, joint research can be conducted and additional government support can maximize the research dollars of the university and the industrial partner. CITI and its affiliated labs and centers have a track record of successful joint projects with industrial partners (such as Texas Instruments, Schlumberger, Compaq, and Nokia) and major government labs including NSF centers, DOE national labs and research groups in DOD and NASA. CITI has worked successfully with industry through both of these models.

CITI understands the importance of leveraging existing research to support future activities and needs. We are committed to continued work with industrial partners and government agencies. Our strategy is to maximize existing research and funding and to build future research on the foundation being laid today. If CITI research is sponsored by a particular industrial partner, that partner obtains the benefits of the research first. In addition, CITI will work with industry and government on issues of intellectual property rights, proprietary information, and technology transfer requirements. CITI is flexible and willing to work to meet the needs of its research partners.

In addition to specific research grants, contracts, and joint proposals, CITI encourages its industrial partners to become corporate affiliates to the engineering department or departments that best reflect a firm's research interests. The primary purpose of the affiliates programs is to establish technical relationships between CITI researchers and their counterparts in industry. The corporate affiliates program facilitates a fruitful exchange between researchers in the laboratory and practitioners in the field. The corporate affiliate is able to keep up to date on the latest non-proprietary research through visits to the CITI centers and labs, an annual visit by a CITI faculty member to the member's workplace to make presentations or to consult, and mailings of the latest technical reports and papers of interest. This program also allows the industrial partner the opportunity to influence the direction of future research, to meet and establish relationships with graduating students for summer and permanent new hire prospects, and to attend CITI and departmental speaker programs and workshops.

Industrial Partner Programs:

Computer Science Corporate Affiliates
Electrical and Computer Engineering Industrial Affiliates
Computational and Applied Math Corporate Affiliates Program

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