<p>Tech solution provider Accenture has awarded 11 research grants to top universities around the world to broaden and deepen the relationships between Accenture’s technology research and development (R&D) groups and leading university researchers. Interestingly, 5 of them are Indians - four in India and one of them working in the US.<br><br>The 2015 Accenture Open Innovation university grant programme recipients and the R&D areas of focus include the following professors: David Bader, Georgia Institute of Technology; Zhejing Bao, Zhejiang University, China; Michael Bernstein and Melissa Valentine of Stanford University; Pushpak Bhattacharyya of IIT Bombay; Sutanu Chakraborti, IIT Madras, Abhijit Deshmukh of Purdue University ; F. Javier Heredia and Joaquim Minguella, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, BarcelonaTech; Michal Kosinski, Stanford University, dean Richard Lyons, University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business; Santonu Sarkar, BITS, Pilani; and Partha Pratim Talukdar of IISC, Bangalore.<br><br>The grant programme helps to support the ground-breaking efforts of leading university research teams, which will be invited to work in collaboration with researchers from the Accenture Technology Labs on R&D projects that are of strategic importance to the technology industry and Accenture’s enterprise clients.<br> <br>“Universities are a critical source of technical and scientific research that can deliver long-term business benefits for organizations around the world,” said Prith Banerjee, managing director of Global Technology R&D, Accenture. “We are thrilled that this grant programme, in conjunction with the Accenture Open Innovation initiative, will enable Accenture Technology Labs researchers to translate a university’s conceptual research – which spans topics from cyber security to 3D printing and cognitive computing – into ideas that can ultimately help solve real business challenges for our enterprise clients.”<br> <br>A part of the Accenture Open Innovation initiative, the grant program acts as a bridge-maker between Accenture’s Global 2000 clients and the technology innovation ecosystem, which includes universities, top tier accelerators, start-ups, venture capitalists and corporate R&D labs from around the world. New technology research from Accenture Strategy found that four out of five enterprise respondents reported innovation was within their top three priorities and about one quarter placed innovation as the number one priority for their organization.<br> <br>"I am delighted that we were amongst a select group of universities around the world to be awarded with a research grant from Accenture,” said Professor Pushpak Bhattacharyya, India Institute of Technology, Bombay. “The combination of IIT Bombay's world renowned Natural Language Processing group with Accenture’s global consulting and technology services expertise will result in a mutually enriching experience, enabling us to work together on cutting edge cognitive computing problems."<br> <br><br> </p>
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