Microsoft Research Asia (MRA), has signed an agreement with the Chinese Ministry of Education to upgrade its five joint labs with China's top universities.

The five labs have been established since 1999 by MRA and a handful of Chinese universities engaged in frontline computer science and multi-media research.

The cooperation has so far resulted in over 40 research projects and more than 240 quality scientific papers.

"The Chinese universities and researchers enjoy all of the intellectual property in these research achievements," noted Harry Shum, president of the MRA.

He said MRA benefits from the cooperation by having the opportunity to hire the cream of students of those universities who have been involved in the projects.

The upgrading of these labs, which were originally established on a corporate basis, will make them part of the overall research regime of the ministry.

"By joining this research regime, the labs will have access to financial and regulatory support from the Ministry of Education that is available to the Key Labs," said Pan Yunhe, president of the Zhejiang University.

"It will be good for the lab's growth and development of future research."

Located in Hangzhou of East China's Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang University has cooperated with MRA in the area of visual recognition and has made fruitful achievements so far, he added.

Shum also noted that such upgrading will also mean the labs will hopefully pass stricter, higher-level academic reviews, which is also good for their future development.

Kang Kejun, vice-president of the Beijing-based Tsinghua University, said the joint lab established by MRA and Tsinghua has been focusing on international cutting-edge research.

"The research projects come from ideas of either our teachers or MRA researchers, or both," he said.

"They do not necessarily have to do with the business interest of Microsoft, but more concerns the researchers' academic interest."

The cooperation with the universities is only part of the MRA's broader, more comprehensive cooperation with China's academic circles.

Since its founding in 1998, MRA has formed research relationships with more than 60 universities and a good many research institutes and organizations.

Also last week, it signed an agreement with the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) to further their cooperation for another five years.

In the past five years, they have worked closely in a variety of research areas such as Chinese language processing, new-generation interface and multimedia technology.

The new deal, amounting to 30 million yuan (US$3.62 million) in investment, will be used to promote research mainly in such areas as applied mathematics, computer science and electronic engineering, according to MRA.

(China Daily November 17, 2004)