Thursday August 9 -- ROCHESTER, N.Y.-- In an effort to drive further research in engineering fields such as green innovation, imaging and smart document technology, nanotechnology and MEMS, Xerox Corporation, through The Xerox Foundation, is providing a $1 million grant to fund fellowships at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The three-year grant will fund the creation of The Xerox Foundation Fellowship Program at MIT's School of Engineering and support multiple master's and doctoral degree candidates annually. The creation of this fellowship program is part of Xerox's ongoing support of open innovation and collaborative research worldwide. It is in addition to The Xerox Foundation's long-standing annual $13 million investment in support of educational and nonprofit initiatives at a variety of universities and organizations.
"The Xerox Fellows program will lead to the creation of more top-notch research projects, strengthen our researchers' relationships with several world-class MIT professors, and enable us to attract bright students to come work in our research laboratories worldwide," said Sophie Vandebroek, chief technology officer and president of the Xerox Innovation Group. "It will also help MIT develop future researchers from groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in engineering."
"This fellowship program will offer important support for talented master's and doctoral degree candidates," said Subra Suresh, Dean of MIT's School of Engineering. "We look forward to strengthening and continuing to build intellectual links between MIT students and faculty and the Xerox research community."
The Xerox Fellows will focus on the following research areas:
- Green Processes and Technologies - Research will focus on understanding environmental impacts over the entire product lifecycle, from raw materials to use by customers and disposal, and on making products and services more environmentally friendly.
- Imaging and Smart Documents - Research will range from the recognition and enhancement of image content to smart document applications such as document summarization, natural language generation and machine translation.
- Nanotechnology and Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) - Research includes micro/nanotechnology projects such as nanostructured materials, microfluidic devices, nanocomposites, microscale heat transfer, and nanomanufacturing in addition to novel 3D polymers and a range of electronic, photonic and magnetic materials, all of which pose exciting possibilities for new devices and applications.
Xerox and educational support
Of the Xerox Foundation's annual $13 million in donations, more than $2 million funds a variety of educational programs, including University Affairs grants, Xerox's technical minority scholarships, scholarship support to more than 140 colleges and universities, and matching employees' gifts to educational institutions. Xerox people also help champion science in schools by volunteering through the Xerox Science Consultants Program at the elementary level and by mentoring high-school FIRST robotics-competition teams. For more information about research at Xerox, visit http://www.xerox.com/innovation.