Idiap Institute to create more than 60 jobs with very high added value

Following a multi-million Swiss franc increase in its budget, Idiap’s new strategy will create more than 60 jobs with very high added value, as well as interdisciplinary groups dedicated to technology transfer towards the industry.

The Idiap Research Institute, based in Martigny in the canton of Valais, has been one of the world’s specialists in artificial and computational intelligence since 1991.

Following the evaluation and acceptance by the Swiss Science and Innovation Council of the research program submitted at the end of 2019 by Idiap for the 2021-2024 period, the Institute will play a leading role in strengthening the socio-economic impact of technologies related to artificial intelligence.

In total, Idiap’s annual budget will be increased from CHF 12 million to nearly 20 million over the next four years. All these resources will enable the Institute to hire the specialists needed to support and increase the transfer of technology towards the industry and the general public.

This strategy has led to the identification of eight areas of expertise related to artificial intelligence that Idiap wants to strengthen to increase its impact. These are signal processing, imaging and computer vision, robotics and autonomous systems, machine learning, speech and language, human-computer interaction, privacy and security, and data analysis and computing.

High value-added jobs for a greater economic impact

“To maximize our impact on socio-economic challenges, we want to focus on the development of innovative technologies through cross-disciplinary research groups,” explains Professor Hervé Bourlard, director of Idiap.

The Institute will continue to grow and will hire nearly sixty people, most of whom will be directly involved in artificial intelligence research and development.