Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship Rewards Academic Research Students in Fields of AI and Cybersecurity

AMSTERDAM, May 25, 2020

QIF is an annual program that focuses on recognizing, rewarding and mentoring the most innovative engineering PhD students across Europe, India, and the United States. The program rewards excellent young researchers in the fields of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity with individual prizes of $40,000, dedicated mentors from the Qualcomm team as well as the opportunity to present their work in person to an audience of technical leaders at the company's HQ in San Diego. This year the program has been successfully transitioned to an online event to accommodate COVID-19 safety regulations. The winners will be invited to present the outcomes of their research in San Diego when conditions allow.

"Investment in R&D is a top priority at Qualcomm as innovation makes our technology possible," said Jim Thompson, executive vice president and chief technology officer, Qualcomm, Inc. "It's exciting to see the next generation of AI and Cybersecurity researchers creating such impactful technology."

This year, eleven partnering universities were invited to submit work. They have been selected as a result of their academic excellence in the fields of machine learning and cybersecurity. The schools are located in Belgium (KU Leuven), the Netherlands (Delft University, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Switzerland (ETHZ and EPFL), the United Kingdom (Imperial College, Cambridge University and Oxford University), Germany (Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Saarbruecken and Technical University of Munich) and Ireland (Trinity College Dublin).

"It's an honor to lead the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship Europe program into its ninth year," said Peter Rauber, senior director of engineering, Qualcomm International. "We are impressed with how the former winners have succeeded in their endeavors and we believe this year's winners will impact the fields of AI and Cybersecurity in remarkable ways, too. The QIF winners are the kind of researchers and engineers who push the state-of-the-art forward."

The winners of the Europe QIF program are David Burt (University of Cambridge), Miguel Cacho Soblechero (Imperial College London), Pietro Frigo (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Vidhi Ramesh Lalchand (University of Cambridge) and Yuki Asano (University of Oxford).