Hewlett-Packard Co is mobilising its assiduously-cultivated relationship with universities worldwide to extend its corporate research capability, establishing three science centres in the next two years as satellites to its HP Laboratories central research organisation. Stanford University will be the site of the first centre, which will begin operating early next month, and the others will be in Europe and in the Far East, but no specific sites have been chosen for these. The company sees the move as a means of bringing products based on unversity research to market more quickly. The Palo Alto company has earmarked $15m over the next three years for the science centres, and at Stanford will provide up to $2.4m for research and facilities support for visiting scientists. Faculty, Hewlett scientists and ones from its affiliates will work together on projects of mutual interest, with the Stanford effort initially going into artificial intelligence, database technology and neural networks. Hewlett, which promises that all research findings will be made public, is furthering a long-term commitment to university research over its 50-year history, and points out that it gave over $40m in cash and kind to universities worldwide last year; US Federal funding on university reserach facilities has declined 95% over the past 20 years.
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