Dive Brief:
- Carnegie Mellon University is partnering with Uber to create a new advanced technology center.
- The center, near Carnegie Mellon’s campus in Pittsburgh, will look to develop driverless vehicle technology, Campus Technology reports.
- By funding Uber Technologies Center, Uber is setting itself against an investor, Google, which has been a pioneer in driverless vehicle research.
Dive Insight:
While providing Google with competition is good news for the higher education research community, one has to wonder if the Carnegie Mellon research won't ultimately benefit the tech giant anyway. Google also has connections to Carnegie Mellon University, as its director of engineering was a former faculty member at Carnegie Mellon who last year returned to head the university's computer science school. Also, Google’s Pittsburgh office has hired “hundreds” of graduates of the university, according to Campus Technology, and the company has acquired technologies developed through Carnegie Mellon’s research.