Chinese search giant Baidu has opened its first overseas joint laboratory, with the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) in Singapore.
Baidu vice president Wang Mengqiu and I2R acting executive director Dr. Tan Geok Leng signed the agreement for setting up the Baidu-I2R Research Center (BIRC) last February in Beijing.
The research center will operate as an R&D unit on I2R’s premises at Fusionopolis, with a team of researchers and engineers, working on cutting-edge research on human language technology.
BIRC has charted a research roadmap for Southeast Asian language resources, natural language processing, information retrieval and extraction, and speech information processing.
It has recently undertaken a research project on Vietnamese and Thai language resources and processing, which is expected to extend Baidu’s Web services to the Southeast Asian market.
Meanwhile, I2R's Speaker Verification technology is expected to be further enhanced by the BIRC team for mobile devices.
"The synergies between Baidu and I2R are clear from the fruits already borne out by our cooperation,” said Wang. “I2R is an excellent partner that can help fulfil our mission of providing the best and most equitable way for people to find what they are looking for online."
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