LUT University has received a donation of one million euros from the IoT Forge Foundation. The donation is allocated to two important fields related to the internet of things (IoT): electric transportation and artificial intelligence (AI).
“Both AI and electric transportation are taking the world by storm, and we at LUT are paving the way in both transitions. This donation is just the boost we need to stay cutting-edge in these fields. We want to keep providing businesses with the most recent AI-related knowledge in education and research,” says Petri Ajo, chief growth officer at LUT University.
Artificial intelligence is often applied to innovation and business development in electric transportation. Last year, LUT announced the opening of the Electric Mobility Research Center (EMRC) in collaboration with Kempower. Now, IoT Forge’s donation will help set up a new hive of activity on LUT's Lahti campus: an innovation hub where students, researchers, and corporate partners can collaborate.
Responsible use of AI
The IoT Forge Foundation is a non-profit, independent foundation that supports companies in the development of IoT projects. Established in 2017 through a one-time investment by Microsoft for a limited period, the independent foundation will be terminated by the end of this year. Its remaining capital will be donated to three Finnish universities.
“We have decided to use our remaining capital to establish projects and training programs related IoT technologies and AI in cooperation with LUT, Aalto University, and Turku University of Applied Sciences. When the foundation is terminated, the remaining capital will be distributed to the scholarship funds of the educational programs mentioned above,” says Matti Hellgrén, CEO of the foundation.
“We believe that our investment of nearly three million euros will strengthen domestic technology expertise both in school curricula and in the business world and will, at the same time, be a significant investment in Finland's future competitiveness. We also hope that the multi-year training projects and programs that are now being established would encourage other foundations and companies to either join those projects or support the development of their own technology areas in a similar manner.”
LUT believes that the donation will enable its partner companies to dive deeper into this highly topical field that defines our future.
“Our target is to make AI an established tool at the university and hire qualified experts to generate more buzz around it. It is especially important that we utilize AI responsibly both in-house and in collaboration with our partners. In other words, the use of AI must comply with laws and statutes and promote transparency, ethics, equality, and inclusivity,” Ajo outlines.
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