Nokia Bell Labs, Inria launch next phase of long-standing partnership to solve future network challenges and the role of machines in automating and augmenting human existence

• Common research focuses on human needs in all contexts of communications – human to human, human to machine, system or platform, as well as intra and inter machine, system and platform
• Nokia and Inria share expertise on information theory, machine learning, graph theory, game theory, cybersecurity, network virtualization and advanced control software
• Common lab links permanent researchers from the two partners with PhD students and postdoctoral researchers

Paris, France – Nokia and Inria today announced the renewal of their joint lab for a four-year period. The announcement took place during an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of Inria with Marcus Weldon, Nokia CTO and Nokia Bell Labs President, and Antoine Petit, Inria CEO.

Launched in 2008, the joint lab associates permanent researchers from the two partners with PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, sharing the same strategic vision to solve the key scientific challenges linked to the evolution of networks and network applications. The aim of this joint research is to offer users the benefits from required network and cloud resources for a contextual and personalized experience of the digital connected world.

The future networks will have to manage a multitude of connected objects, to host and interconnect massively distributed functions, to feature an unprecedented agility to support differentiated and demanding use cases like the connected car, industry 4.0, smart city and e-health. This will require strong guarantees in terms of security and privacy, while hiding the complexity through a high level of automation. To achieve this aim, this new phase of the common lab will associate advanced research in information theory, machine learning, graph theory, game theory, cybersecurity, network virtualization and advanced control software.

The scope of the collaboration covers several research actions dedicated to:

• Information theory and algorithms to solve the challenges of IoT
• Analytics and machine learning to dynamically and automatically optimize the virtualized network
• Scalable distributed learning and control for augmented intelligence to operate complex IoT networks of dynamic elements
• Cybersecurity to provide privacy, data integrity and resilience against intrusions

Marcus Weldon, Nokia Chief Technical Officer and Nokia Bell Labs President, said: “Nokia Bell Labs collaborates with the best academic teams in the world on solving the key technical challenges confronting humankind. Together, Inria and Bell Labs are collaborators and co-pioneers in this endeavor, with a rich and fruitful relationship over the past 20 years. We have even higher expectations and plans for our future collaboration via our common laboratory centered on addressing the fundamental challenges of humans in the future connected world.”

Antoine Petit, Inria CEO, added “Inria develops the whole scope from research to applications in the area of computer science and applied mathematics. With leading companies, we operate joint labs that are focused on long term cooperation. With Nokia Bell Labs we develop technologies that will power the future of networks and telecommunication. Our common goal is to produce new scientific results as well as new innovations that can enrich the technologies and products developed by Nokia. It is the DNA of Inria to go from high level research to industrial applications.”