10 Downing Street, London
May 24, 2012
By Justin Rattner, Intel CTO
Good afternoon!
Dear Chancellor, dignitaries, guests and members of the press, what an absolute delight to be here at 10 Downing Street to celebrate the launch of Intel’s latest research institute as well as the official announcement of the Intel Labs Europe UK network of nine labs and development centers.
As leaders around the world look to the future, there’s a growing understanding that we need to adopt true sustainability practices across many aspects of our society. Forward-looking governments are already embedding strategies around sustainability into their policies and legislation.
Here in the UK, for example, the Low Carbon Transition Plan aims for a 34% cut in carbon emissions from 1990 levels by 2020. And right here, the City of London has set a target of achieving a 60% reduction in carbon levels by 2025.
While these are excellent steps toward improving sustainability, cities of the world continue to pose growing challenges for the future.
Today, more than 50% of the world’s population lives in cities, and those cities consume more than 75% of the world’s energy as well as contributing about 80% of greenhouse gases.
Moreover, in 2050, most of the nine billion people in the world will live in cities. Therefore the demands of cities will be highly representative of the demands of humanity in general.
Addressing these demands will be at the heart of Intel’s newest effort to better understand and to advance the state-of-the-art in sustainable technologies and practices.
Together with Imperial College London and University College London, we are here today to officially launch the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities.
The Institute’s goal is to bring together experts from both academia and industry to form a new collaborative research community. As we join with our academic and other industrial collaborators, we see the opportunity to collectively research and create an evolutionary leap for cities in terms of resource efficiency, new services and ease of living.
I am pleased to tell you that Intel Labs and the two universities are hard at work defining a robust research agenda for the new institute, including engaging with local communities to understand how they want to live in their city and what they would value in the design of a sustainable city.
In this way we believe the institute will be a test case for not just triple, but quadruple helix innovation where industry, university, government, andthe citizenry combine forces to drive value and change beyond the scope of what any one sector could achieve on their own and do so in far less time and for far less money.
The innovations brought forth by the Institute will include making cities more “resilient and responsive” by harnessing data gathered through sensor technologies embedded in city infrastructure and data shared by individuals and communities.
The Institute will use this data to develop models for “sustaining sustainable behavior”, in areas such as community energy management and water conservation.
The Institute will also explore how fixed and mobile sensors across the city, including intelligent connected vehicles, can be used in the collection of data on the weather, emissions and traffic flows, for use by city planners in the development of more sustainable cities in the future.
Why is London the right location for this new institute? London is the 5th largest city in the world, it has the largest GDP in Europe, and with over 300 languages and 200 ethnic communities its diversity is a microcosm of the planet itself, offering an exciting test bed to create and define sustainable cities.
London is, as everyone knows, the host city to the 2012 summer Olympic Games, and we plan to use the event to understand the experiences of a city under pre-planned stress. What systems worked or didn’t work and why? How were the daily lives of the citizens, workers, and businesses of London affected?
We look forward to reporting on the research results of this study in the future and are hopeful that the outcomes will stimulate entrepreneurs to deliver new innovations and services. I fully expect that the research results created here will have a real and lasting impact, not only on the industry, but also on cities around the world.
Such broad industry impact is exactly what Intel Labs is all about. We pride ourselves in continually pushing the boundaries of research and innovation, and that is very much the way in which we approach collaborative university research.
With 40 years of funding academic research as a company, we are no strangers to this area, but we knew we could do better and thus several years ago began to rethink our model for effective industry-university collaboration with the goal of moving ideas from the lab to the market more successfully.
As a result, we’ve spent the last few years building a worldwide network of collaborative research institutes, including what will soon be seven Intel Science and Technology Centers (ISTCs) in the U.S. and currently expanding to include five international Intel Collaborative Research Institutes or ICRIs as they are known.
The ICRI for Sustainable Connected Cities joins this growing number of centers and institutes, becoming an integral part of Intel Labs and directly contributing to our mission of delivering breakthrough technologies to fuel Intel’s growth.
I look forward to seeing the results from the new, collaborative research community between Intel, UCL, and ICL over the next few years. And we are actively engaged in expanding that research community in the near future to include additional institutions and companies who share in the Institute’s vision.
The institute here in London also joins the growing Intel Labs Europe R&D network. The ILE network connects 40 labs and development centers that span the continent from Bucharest to Barcelona to Belfast and includes over 4000 R&D personnel.
Last but not least, we are also announcing the Intel Labs Europe UK Network with nine labs and development centers and 350 people. Intel Vice President Martin Curley will be up shortly to tell you more about the exciting progress of Intel Labs Europe and ILE UK.
Let me conclude by saying how honored and privileged Intel is to be a part of this important announcement. We want to thank the UK Government, including the Chancellor Osborne, Minister Willetts, and Tim Luke in the Prime Minister’s office. They’ve all been enormously helpful in this endeavor.
We look forward to a long and most productive collaboration. Congratulations! Let’s invent the future, together, right here in London!
Thanks!