First Phase of InterDigital-Calit2 'Innovation Challenge' a Success

San Diego, Calif., April 9, 2012 — InterDigital Inc. (NASDAQ: IDCC) and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at the University of California, San Diego today announced the successful completion of the first phase of the inaugural InterDigital Innovation Challenge (I²C), one of the richest student technology competitions in the world. Despite the very challenging nature of wireless engineering, the competition attracted 15 entries from leading universities in the United States and Canada.

The just-concluded submission phase of the Innovation Challenge drew proposals from teams at Stanford University, Columbia University, Rutgers University, Drexel University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of California campuses in San Diego, Berkeley and Irvine, Canada’s Waterloo University and Université Laval, and the Ohio State University, to name a few.

Teams were required to submit technical proposals in the areas of radio signal propagation and processing; radio modem innovations; energy improvement in radio processing; radio network management and systems innovations; compression and data management techniques, or wireless and network virtualization. 

“The tremendous response, and the high technical level of the submissions, underscore the value of partnering with Calit2 to create this competition,” said Naresh Soni, Chief Technology Officer at InterDigital. “Development of leading-edge wireless networking solutions is very, very challenging. We at InterDigital understand this, since our business is based on solving those technical challenges, and as a result we’re pleased to support it via this competition. It’s gratifying to see that support rewarded, and to see that the emerging research talent for addressing those critical issues is so robust.” 

With the submission phase complete, participants now enter a period of public voting. Members of the public are invited to register at i2c.calit2.net, where they can review the submissions and vote for their favorite until public voting ends on April 30. The winner of this ‘popular vote,’ as well as nine other finalists selected by the competition’s nine-member judging panel, will move on to the final round, or “incubation period.” In this final round, each finalist must submit more detailed information in support of their proposals in the form of code, analysis, simulations, models, prototypes and/or platforms. Finalists have until July 13 to complete their submissions.

“I am pleased to note the participation of teams from many of the prominent wireless centers around the country,” said Ramesh Rao, Director of the UCSD division of Calit2. “The period of public voting will draw further attention to the InterDigital Innovation Challenge.”

The judging panel for the competition includes Lawrence Larson, Dean of the Brown University School of Engineering; Dipankar Raychaudhuri, Rutgers School of Engineering Professor and WINLAB Director; Jerry Gibson, UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering Professor; Arogyaswami Paulraj, Stanford University Professor Emeritus; Hamid Jafarkhani, UC Irvine Engineering Professor and Director of the Center for Pervasive Communications and Computing; Michael Robertson, founder and CEO of MP3Tunes; Martha Dennis, telecommunications entrepreneur and venture capitalist; as well as Mr. Soni and Dr. Rao.

The winners of the competition will be announced Sept. 21 at GigaOM’s flagship Mobilize event in San Francisco (http://event.gigaom.com/mobilize/). Participants in the InterDigital Innovation Challenge are vying for $175,000 in total awards.

About InterDigital

InterDigital develops fundamental wireless technologies that are at the core of mobile devices, networks, and services worldwide. We solve many of the industry's most critical and complex technical challenges, inventing solutions for more efficient broadband networks and a richer multimedia experience years ahead of market deployment. InterDigital has licenses and strategic relationships with many of the world's leading wireless companies.  For more information, visit: www.interdigital.com.

About Calit2 at UC San Diego

The UC San Diego Division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), together with Calit2’s division at U.C. Irvine, houses more than 1,000 researchers across the two campuses, organized around more than 50 projects on the future of telecommunications and information technology and how these technologies will transform a range of applications important to the California economy and its citizens’ quality of life. For more information about Calit2, visit www.calit2.net.

Related Links

InterDigital Innovation Challenge

Media Contacts

Tiffany Fox, (858) 246-0353, tfox@ucsd.edu