Symbian University Research Relations
Another thing that came out of my visit to Symbian last week was information on Symbian’s new University Research Relations.
Having worked for Symbian partners I know how difficult it has previously been for them (irrespective of their size or status) to partner and gain access to source code to allow adaptation of the OS. It has been a legal quagmire and has tended to take months rather than weeks. These restrictions have also applied to universities who may have been dissuaded from using or performing research related to the Symbian OS. However, I learnt last night that initial steps are being taken to provide universities with access and assistance in the form of ‘University Research Relations’.
Initially, Symbian are interested in universities that already have either a geographical or some technical link with Symbian. For example, they might be located in London, Cambridge, Bangalore or Beijing or have someone known to Symbian who can act as a ‘champion’. Later, as the Foundation evolves it’s expected more partnerships to be created worldwide allowing both research to pass from universities to Symbian as well as improving Symbian’s visibility as a mobile platform. If you are a University interested in using the Symbian platform in your research then you can email research@symbian.com. While Symbian’s support for university research is mainly enabling access to the OS and technical support they also have a small amount of research funding available for research projects that are of particularly strong interest to Symbian.
Note that these efforts are in addition to existing work by the Symbian Academy to get Symbian OS taught at universities. There’s a new web page describing Symbian’s university engagement.
If you are a student, the Student Essay competition closes soon at the end of September.
