Posted on 12 November 2009
A new collaboration between the University of Wales, Pingar - the New Zealand software company which has developed the next generation ‘intelligent’ search solution - and New Zealand’s University of Waikato was announced at a private reception held for Pingar at the House of Commons yesterday.
The Prince of Wales Innovation Scholarships programme (PoWIS), managed by the University of Wales, will provide funding for a University of Waikato postgraduate to work as the placement PhD student on a major research and development project for Pingar at its base in Swansea for up to three years. The aim of the PoWIS programme is to place doctoral researchers within participating businesses to help develop their innovation capacity. This will be achieved by having each scholar undertake key research projects, supported by national and international academic supervisors, to support the innovation potential of the selected business.
John Beer, co-founder of Pingar, said that the collaborative research announcement was an important part of the ongoing development of Pingar’s electronic search capability, which had received an overwhelming response at its launch at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference: “Pingar’s ongoing commitment to further enhance the functionality of its search engine algorithm means that it will actively pursue collaborative R&D ventures like this one with the University of Wales,” says Beer. He explained that the product could increase worker productivity in the enterprise search space, delivering an improved quality of search result in seconds and resulting in significant cost savings for the enterprise.”
Professor Marc Clement, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales, said: “We are very pleased to collaborate with Pingar and the University of Waikato in the development of additional research which will extend the company’s technology into a world-class, leading application. This is an excellent research project for one of our new PoWIS scholars to undertake, as it is such a good fit with the purpose of the programme.”
The launch at the House of Commons was hosted by Derek Wyatt MP, and attended by key members of both the UK Government and Opposition. New Zealand’s UK Trade Representative Michelle Templar and other New Zealand UK High Commission officials were also present.