IBM and KACST Sign ICT Development Contract - U.S.-Saudi Arabian Business Council

November 17, 2009 - IBM recently made a multi-year agreement with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) to collaborate on advancing machine translation technologies, intellectual property development, and creating a National Women Software Development Center. IBM researchers, business consultants, and KACST scientists will collaborate to enhance the IBM Machine Translation Engine to translate Arabic to other languages as well as provide education services to KACST researchers on the features of the statistical machine translation technology. In addition, IBM will apply its patent and intellectual property management expertise to enable KACST to convert its inventions into patents, manage its intellectual property portfolio, and maximize opportunities for commercialization of its research and development advancements in global markets. The establishment of the National Women Software Development Center will give female software professionals in the Kingdom an opportunity to advance their technical skills while providing services and products to clients around the world. The contract, which is one of many between IBM and KACST, also stipulates that KACST will purchase an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer to allow KACST scientists to perform complex simulations and computational modeling.