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EMC to open Cambridge lab, launch MIT sponsorship deal

By annie shum | June 24, 2009

EMC Corp. is beefing up its presence in Massachusetts with a new research facility and sponsorship of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab in an effort to better link itself with university research and startups. The Hopkinton storage and information management giant (NYSE: EMC) said Wednesday the Media Lab sponsorship is one of several initiatives coordinated out of EMC Research Cambridge, which will be located at 11 Cambridge Ctr. in Cambridge. The center will house EMC’s security-business research lab, RSA Laboratories, as well as about a dozen researchers, technologists and business leaders across EMC’s business units.

The company also has research facilities in China and Santa Clara, Calif. “Research and advanced technology groups across EMC, along with our global university research partners, are discovering and exploring new technologies that will shape the future of digital information,” said Jeff Nick, EMC senior vice president and chief technology officer, in a statement. “This is an incredible opportunity for EMC to bring together some of the world’s leading research minds and innovators in areas such as personal information management, information integration and cloud computing.”

As a consortium sponsor of the MIT Media Lab, EMC will be able to access the center’s research on how people use and interact with new technologies. EMC said its initial collaboration will be on new models for data ownership and usage, interfaces for business transactions and health care IT initiatives. A consortium sponsorship costs $200,000 per year for a minimum of three years. Sponsors receive full intellectual property rights to technology developed at the lab during their sponsorship.

The announcement comes a week after EMC and a group of universities and technology companies announced the development of a high performance computing research facility in Holyoke. Other tech giants have built dedicated R&D labs in Cambridge in recent years. Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and IBM Corp. both built research centers in the city in the past two years.

By Jackie Noblett, June 24, 2009

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