News

Peking U and UCLA Partner in Engineering and Science Research

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 07/14/09

Peking University (PKU) in Beijing and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) will be developing a new Joint Research Institute of Science and Engineering to provide an institutional umbrella for collaborative, multi-disciplinary research between the two universities. PKU and UCLA faculty and students will also benefit from cross-educational and cross-cultural experiences through a jointly-defined syllabus, hands-on training, and an exchange program.

A new engineering laboratory at each university will be dedicated to advanced system design and equipped with hardware, software, FPGA silicon, IP, and tools provided through donations from corporate sponsors. For example, Xilinx is donating $500,000 worth of Virtex field programmable gate array (FPGA) development systems and electronic design software and establishing scholarships to support overseas study and research for students enrolled in the program, one from UCLA attending PKU and one from PKU attending UCLA.

"UCLA and Xilinx have over 15 years of collaboration history in the area of FPGA architecture and synthesis tool research," said Jason Cong, UCLA professor and co-director of the new institute. "We're very grateful to Xilinx for its generous support of the joint research institute. The company's donation of hardware, software, and student scholarships will allow us to set up state-of-the art embedded system design labs with shared curriculum and to support students for international educational research."