Startup Europe Partnership is a platform established by the European Commission in 2014 with an aim to scale up Europe’s startups through strategic partnerships with global corporations. Two of SEP’s founding partners, an open innovation advisory firm Mind the Bridge based in Italy and the United States and a British innovation foundation Nesta, hold the SEP Corporate Startup Stars annually to showcase the best models of corporate-startup collaboration.

SEP Corporate Startup Stars Awards has seven award categories including ‘Accelerator’, ‘Procurement’, ‘Investment’, ‘M&A’ and ‘Open Innovation Approach’. Among these, Samsung ranked first for the highest award – ‘SEP Europe’s Corporate Startup Stars’ – this year, acknowledged among local startups in the continent as the friendliest and the most rigorous supporter in terms of company acceleration, procurement and investments.

“Collaboration between established corporates and startups benefits them both. Startups get the resources and market insight to help them scale up, while their supporters are driven with innovation and cultural change,” commented Jyrki Tapani Katainen, the European Commission Vice President for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness. “Organizations cooperating well should be recognized as trailblazers that can inspire others.”

Roberto Mauro, Managing Director Europe, Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center (Right) is receiving the SEP Top 1 Europe’s Corporate Startup Stars Awards from Jyrki Tapani Katainen, European Commission Vice-President (© European Union, 2018 / Source: EC – Audiovisual Service / Photo: Lukasz Kobus)

“The explosion of data and the revolution in core technologies is creating incredible opportunities in nearly every sector,” said Roberto Mauro, Managing Director of Europe at Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center. “By combining venture investments with Samsung’s vast technology ecosystem – spanning innovation, research, procurement, sales, and marketing through local, regional, and corporate channels – we can enable the next wave of innovators in Europe and around the world.”

In Europe, Samsung has been engaging with startups in ways that are uniquely tailored to each market – accelerating the development of innovative products and services in industries such as cybersecurity, healthcare, retail, banking, logistics, mobility, real estate, and education.

On the wider international stage, during the last two decades, Samsung Electronics has worked tirelessly to build a broad and deep engagement with a variety of startup communities – particularly those active in hardware, software and services, mobile communications, consumer electronics, and automotive industries. Last year, Samsung invested more than $200 million in 75 startups worldwide and expects the investments to continue to grow in the future. Global startups and companies have also been provided access to a spectrum of Samsung global venture platforms, including:

• Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center (SSIC): Global organization focused on driving the next generation of growth for Samsung Electronics in the new data economy, through innovation, investment, and mergers & acquisitions
• Samsung Catalyst Fund (SCF): Evergreen multi-stage venture capital fund that invests globally in strategic ideas for Samsung’s mobile, device solutions and consumer electronics groups. Investment spans across innovation in areas that include: artificial intelligence, smart factory and robotics, digital health, autonomous systems, and cloud and data infrastructure
• Samsung NEXT: Builds, grows and scales transformative software and services to complement Samsung’s global hardware footprint. A leading driver of Samsung’s transformation into an integrated hardware and software company, Samsung NEXT combines product development, investment, M&A and partnerships under one roof. Samsung NEXT operates an $150M fund to invest in early stage software and services startups
• Samsung Ventures: Early-to-late-stage investments that are relevant to the current and next generation of Samsung products and services
• Samsung Research: Collaborates with universities, research institutes, corporates and startups to drive innovation for Samsung’s Consumer Electronics and IT & Mobile businesses

It is Samsung’s plan to foster even deeper relationships with the innovation community through knowledge exchange, strategy discussions, deal flow presentations, and collaborations with companies funded through a variety of investments and commercialization efforts. Samsung will continue moving forward to strengthen and create more partnerships with startups across the world.

SEP Europe’s Corporate Startup Stars Awards 2018 participants at the ceremony (© European Union, 2018 / Source: EC – Audiovisual Service / Photo: Lukasz Kobus)

Samsung today is an unquestioned global technology leader – yet, in this complex and competitive global landscape, the company has been embarking on an active course to transform itself, navigating emergent challengers and new technology categories, as it sets course for the future.

A major driver in this transformation has been Samsung’s expansion in Silicon Valley, where the company has had roots for over 30 years. Since 2012, Samsung has been investing heavily to broaden its operations and strategic partnerships in the valley, assembling a cadre of area veterans and innovators to cultivate emerging areas such as AI, health, IoT, and the cloud, and at the macro-level, to transform Samsung’s own organization and operations.

From the decision to expand operations in Silicon Valley, to the current efforts there, to Samsung’s relentless mission to remain at the forefront of technology change, this three-part special feature hears directly from Samsung leaders in the valley on what the company is doing there.

What’s Next for Samsung Silicon Valley

Samsung’s presence in Silicon Valley has come to represent a new way of operation for the company. The traditional Samsung approach had always involved a deliberate examination of a market before the company would introduce a new technology.  In contrast, and spearheading the next chapter in Samsung’s growth, Samsung Silicon Valley will remain focused on the pursuit of a radically open style of innovation to drive, as Jacopo Lenzi, senior vice president at Samsung NEXT, shared earlier in this series. “The evolution of Samsung from a hardware manufacturer to a comprehensive tech company that ultimately is focused on delivering experiences and solutions for consumers, beyond devices,” he said.

The approach will be surely, disruptive, and one-rooted in examination, exploration and, at times, error.  But it is these learnings and experiences that Samsung leaders firmly believe will help the company not only stay ahead, but continue enormous growth into new areas. “We recognize that the best time to disrupt is during a point of prosperity, not panic,” said Chris Byrne, Head of IP Strategy at SSIC.

So what’s next for Samsung in Silicon Valley? As various Samsung leaders in the valley shared, the movement will very much be around a pursuit of partnerships to drive opportunity coupled with the strategic consolidation of technologies, all intended to infuse a new spirit of openness throughout Samsung.

Partnerships to Drive Opportunity

For the Silicon Valley team, the approach to innovation will continue to be the openness to ideas from anywhere, from inside and outside Samsung. “Partnerships are the difference between winning and losing. You cannot do it by yourself anymore,” said Francis Ho, Head of Digital Health at SSIC.

In the pursuit of partnerships to drive opportunities, Samsung leaders in the valley share a commitment to examining where the latest trends are going, with the end aim simple, to enrich people’s lives. Towards this goal, areas of particular interest like the cloud, AI, smart health, and privacy and security may not be related to current Samsung businesses, but represent future areas of growth for the company. “This is the great challenging experiment—how do we Silicon ‘Valley-ize’ Samsung? How do we make it think and operate like a start-up?” said Chris Byrne.

In practical application, Samsung’s investment arms in the Valley, the Samsung Catalyst Fund and Samsung NEXT Ventures, will continue in their work to discover and engage with new partners. For example, the Catalyst Fund team of just 10 already spends half of their time meeting with startups and entrepreneurs and the other half promoting collaboration with Samsung business units. This approach, underdriven by a spirit of openness to trial and error, won’t change. Brendon Kim, Managing Director of Samsung NEXT Ventures , says that “being bold often means having a strong point of view and vision to invest ahead of the clear opportunity.”.

Also, in their continuing work, the teams will remain committed to persuading internal and outsides stakeholders to think outside and beyond the traditional value proposition of a venture. “We don’t have a 10-year time horizon like typical VCs. We just don’t look at it like they do, with five years to invest and five years to harvest. Our approach is to invest in things that are disruptive and defensible, regardless of the time horizon,” explained Shankar Chandran, Head of the Samsung Catalyst Fund.

Dr. Francis Ho added, “When you are a $200 billion company, everything we touch has a ‘B’. But sometimes, the work we are doing, to truly embrace open innovation, has no ‘B’ yet. So, we have to be very persuasive internally to stay focused and invest.”

Strategic Consolidation of Technologies

In its future work, Samsung leaders in Silicon Valley are also keen in their vision to consolidate across technologies. From vertical platforms for IoT to cloud and data storage to smart machines, the team is looking at ways to cross boundaries, and explore and capitalize on synergy areas.

One example is artificial intelligence. Of course, AI isn’t a new concept. It’s one of the most talked about topics in tech circles, both in the valley and around the world.  Yet, the technology is still in its infancy. “AI is still pretty early. We’ve positioned ourselves at the starting line. Now we need to deliver down the line,” said Jacopo Lenzi.

Presently, AI is very transactional, but Samsung leaders view the future of AI in the development of reasoning and planning capabilities – a field they hope to lead precisely by leveraging and consolidating across technologies. With Samsung’s vast portfolio of consumer devices, the company understands human/device interaction better than anybody, and the company has more touch points than any other through which it can bring AI to life. That might mean looking at ways a personal assistant comes to life in VR, for example, as opposed to how it works on a mobile device. “People may not think of us in AI, but we have this user base and portfolio of products with which to work. We want to use AI to make these products work better,” said Nick Cassimatis, who heads the Intelligence Lab at SRA.

Henry Holtzman, who leads work into convergence at SRA, is taking a similar approach to the work he and his team are doing. With more and more networked devices in our pockets, homes and cars, Samsung sees the need to make how consumers interact with devices even more fluid and convenient. “There is real user interface fatigue. Content is disorganized. And different generations consume information and content in different ways — older people interface with Netflix and younger people use Snapchat. So how do we make these gaps less confusing and more convenient?”

Infusing a New Spirit of Openness throughout Samsung

The ultimate aim of both this pursuit of partnerships, as well as consolidation across technologies, is to serve as a new model of openness that Samsung can emulate in how it operates throughout. To help business units no longer just look at the year ahead, but instead focus on long-term ideas that can change the way people live, with work bridging multiple business units. “The goal is getting our various business units to see beyond the next year and understand the impact,” said Shankar Chandran.

The easiest way to accomplish this, of course, will be through real life-results that help Samsung achieve breakthroughs in innovation.

Henry Holtzman shares an example of how several years ago, SRA was challenged to rethink how families shared information and memories. Team members visited homes to see the ways in which people posted information, pictures or notes.  What they noticed was that many families had calendars, photos, and messages on their fridges, turning it into a focal point of their everyday lives. This observation led the team to begin early design and concepts that would turn analog information sharing, like paper post-it notes and taped up pictures, and make them digital. The result? Calendar, sticky notes, voice, and camera features that came to life as part of Samsung’s award-winning Family Hub refrigerator. It is precisely this type of innovation and collaboration that the Silicon Valley team envisions being applied across Samsung in the future.

“The common element in this process was advanced concepting, which is a three-year concepting period for developing ideas,” said Holtzman. “After ideas are developed, they head through the innovation system — which includes trusted agencies and accelerators. This is the open innovation community that the Silicon Valley team is fostering.”

The Future is Wide Open

Technological innovation is moving faster than at any time in history, and thanks to Samsung’s efforts in Silicon Valley, the company is better positioned than ever before to be a leader in innovation and transform lives.

“The world will change more in the next five years than it did in the last 50,” says Chris Byrne. “And innovation in the next five years can and will come from anywhere. There are no geographic boundaries on brain power. So, our challenge is to be open—open in terms of how we innovate and open in terms of where innovation will come from.”

Even after working in the technology world for more than two decades, Lenzi said, “No other company has the same reach as Samsung and the opportunity to partner with innovators all over the world to realize Samsung’s vision is why I’m here,” and it is that passion for changing the way people live that will continue to drive Samsung’s efforts in Silicon Valley to achieve new heights for the future.

Samsung today is an unquestioned global technology leader – yet, in this complex and competitive global landscape, the company has been embarking on an active course to transform itself, navigating emergent challengers and new technology categories, as it sets course for the future.

A major driver in this transformation has been Samsung’s expansion in Silicon Valley, where the company has had roots for over 30 years. Since 2012, Samsung has been investing heavily to broaden its operations and strategic partnerships in the valley, assembling a cadre of area veterans and innovators to cultivate emerging areas such as AI, health, IoT, and the cloud, and at the macro-level, to transform Samsung’s own organization and operations.

From the decision to expand operations in Silicon Valley, to the current efforts there, to Samsung’s relentless mission to remain at the forefront of technology change, this three-part special feature hears directly from Samsung leaders in the valley on what the company is doing there.

Through strategic investment in products and hedging against risk in market entry, Samsung had, by the first decade of the new millennium, become the world’s largest technology maker. It leads various product categories – ranging from semiconductors to smart devices to home entertainment. Intent on continuing growth for the future, however, Samsung leaders actively sought to explore ways to cultivate innovations like IoT, AI, and the data economy, with their enormous potential and ability to break across traditional silos.

In leadership gatherings throughout the late 2000’s, Samsung Electronics’ top management articulated the direction even more directly to their brain trust of leaders: “How do you grow when you’re already the largest company? What are we going to look like ten years from now? It will be our critical mission to figure that out.”  While the past approach had involved Samsung benchmarking other players and finding a strategic position in ripe markets, the future called for it to take ownership of its growing industry leadership and be the catalyst to lead the future.

Having established Samsung Semiconductor (SSI) in Silicon Valley more than thirty years ago, Samsung leaders had long recognized the area as a nexus of open innovation, with SSI having played an instrumental role in the valley’s growth. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, Samsung leaders had also experienced in the valley prime example of the benefits in innovation to be cultivated from a ‘failure as fruitful’ approach – where mistakes and failure, both individually and with others, could drive innovation, and fine-hone developments.

In considering Samsung transforming for the future, the insights of SSI seemed a natural place to start, and the prospect of leveraging expansion into the valley as a vehicle for change, tantalizing. Realizing they were onto something, Samsung’s brain trust next went on a manhunt to recruit the best and brightest industry leaders as well as valley veterans, and soon had the core pieces in place including Young Sohn, currently president and chief strategy officer of Samsung Electronics, and David Eun, president of Samsung NEXT and Samsung Electronics.

Shankar Chandran, who also was recruited into the mix to head the Samsung Catalyst Fund after 15 years as an active venture investor and former engineer, describes the vision coming together: “The tech world is consolidating behind certain major players and Samsung is one of the most prominent technology companies of the last decade. Joining the company and investing on behalf of Samsung is much more rewarding and impactful than as an independent investor. Our driving vision is simple. How do we lead in new areas?”

Today in Silicon Valley

After beginning strategic expansion in 2012, Samsung in Silicon Valley today boasts about 2,000 employees working across five major units throughout the Bay Area. The scope of work is both diverse and comprehensive from investments and partnerships in disruptive technologies and start-ups to hardware innovation in semiconductors, storage, and LCD panels to work in advanced software and the user experience.

While Samsung’s presence in Silicon Valley is diverse, each unit plays a unique and key role:

Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC) (est. 2012): SSIC’s mission is to develop and accelerate disruptive technologies through open innovation, investments, and acquisitions by working in collaboration with entrepreneurs and strategic partners.  Its investment arms, the Samsung Catalyst Fund (SCF) as well as in-house M&A team, have hit the ground running since inception. For example, SCF, which has offices in Menlo Park, California, Tel Aviv, and London, has completed more than 40 investments globally. This year, SSIC’s M&A team executed the USD 8 billion acquisition of audio, automotive and connected technologies leader, Harman International – South Korea’s largest overseas deal and Samsung’s largest acquisition to date. SSIC also spearheaded the development of the ARTIK Smart IoT platform, an open platform for simpler, faster development and deployment of IoT devices and applications.

Samsung NEXT (est. 2013): Samsung NEXT (formerly Open Innovation Center; Global Innovation Center) partners with innovators to build ideas into products, and grow products into businesses that scale, leverage and transform the broader Samsung ecosystem. Samsung NEXT has empowered thousands of entrepreneurs around the world through incubation, investment, partnership and acquisition. To date, the company has made more than 70 investments and has led the major acquisitions of startups including the mobile-payment solution LoopPay (Samsung Pay), the open IoT platform for connected home SmartThings, and the next-gen AI assistant Viv. In early 2017, Samsung NEXT launched a USD 150 million fund to increase Samsung’s global support of early-stage startups, pursuing advanced software and services innovation in areas such as cybersecurity and IoT, among others.  Beyond Silicon Valley, Samsung NEXT also has a team in Korea and has expanded to include locations in the hubs of San Francisco, New York, Tel Aviv, and most recently, Berlin.

Samsung Research America (SRA) (est. 1988): With roots tracing back to 1988, SRA moved into its new Mountain View campus in late 2013. SRA, which also has campuses across North America, researches and builds new core technologies to enhance the competitive edge of Samsung products, and strengthens open innovation by leveraging key relationships with start-ups and academic institutions. SRA consists of several labs from the Mobile Payments and Security Lab which focuses on technologies like Android, Knox, and Samsung Pay to the Digital Solutions Lab which feeds into Samsung’s visual display business to the Computer Science and Innovation Center focusing on areas like AI and convergence. The key approach of SRA is to bring all these units under ‘one roof’ to improve synergy and interwork across Samsung’s R&D efforts.

Open Innovation Transforming Samsung Operations

Samsung’s efforts in Silicon Valley are transforming its very own operations and business strategy. Innovating today to transform tomorrow, the focus is on priming technology and partnerships to identify, address and guide human-centric trends that will ultimately transform society, for real people everywhere.

While the investment portfolios are not always directly related to Samsung’s core businesses and existing product portfolios, they do aim to forecast wholly new sectors for the future. Samsung leadership is also very much nurturing this spirit to percolate throughout the entire Samsung organization – the aim not simply about the consumption of products, but the way the technologies become tools to transform the way Samsung invents, works, and collaborates with its broader ecosystem of industry peers and partners.

Part two of this series will look more specifically into the work of SSIC and Samsung NEXT, and how the teams there are driving for change and success across unique platforms and innovation areas.

Samsung Electronics today introduced its expanded SAMSUNG ARTIK Smart Internet of Things (IoT) platform featuring two new module families, ARTIK 0 and ARTIK 7, new device management capabilities in SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud and an expanded partner ecosystem. The result is a complete IoT development solution to help companies take their IoT projects from concept to reality in record time.

According to a recent research study by 451 Group, 65 percent of enterprises are using the Internet of Things (IoT) to optimize their services and product offerings. With the SAMSUNG ARTIK platform, many of these enterprises now can build IoT solutions to further transform their businesses and enter new markets.

Today, businesses struggle to build IoT solutions in-house. They have to grapple with the tasks of building a scalable infrastructure, adding new expertise and managing cumbersome integrations. The SAMSUNG ARTIK Smart IoT end-to-end platform provides companies with all the upfront IoT hardware and software they need, so they can focus on developing disruptive IoT products quickly and simply.

“IoT is one of Samsung’s major strategic areas of focus and growth,” said Dr. Byungse So, Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer for the Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center. “By enabling the product-development cycle to flourish, we can help usher in the next generation of IoT innovation. We’re paving the way for companies to reimagine how these new devices, apps and services can impact everyday life to address global challenges.”

Internal groups at Samsung are leveraging the SAMSUNG ARTIK platform to build fresh new IoT solutions of their own. For example, Samsung’s Consumer Electronics division has leveraged the SAMSUNG ARTIK platform to create an IoT smart air purifier. “The SAMSUNG ARTIK platform allowed us to cost-effectively build prototypes of our new solution and quickly get it to market,” said Youngsoo Do, Senior Vice President of Digital Control Group, Samsung Electronics. “With the SAMSUNG ARTIK platform, we also have the ability to connect intelligently to other smart devices, as well as to the cloud, which enables new use cases.”

An End-to-End IoT Solution

The SAMSUNG ARTIK Smart IoT platform unifies hardware, software, cloud, security and partner ecosystems in a single offering so that enterprises can reduce the time, cost and risk typically associated with the delivery of complex IoT solutions. Unlike other IoT platforms, the SAMSUNG ARTIK Smart IoT platform makes it easy to build IoT products and services by addressing the complexity of IoT with easy-to-use, open and enterprise-grade APIs, SDKs and tools. Key additions to the new SAMSUNG ARTIK platform include:

• ARTIK 0 family: The ARTIK 0 family of modules enables low-power, lightweight, cost-optimized devices targeted at end-devices including HVAC, lighting, industrial sensors, personal health monitoring and more. The modules are built on power-optimized ARM® Cortex®-M microcontrollers and support low-power wireless standards, such as the ZigBee®, Thread®, or Bluetooth® Smart standards. They save customers time and money by providing a complete connectivity solution, including networking stacks, radio frequency (RF) components and precertification for regulatory approval.

• ARTIK 7 family: The ARTIK 7 family of modules is intended for high-end gateways and multimedia applications. With an 8-core 64-bit Cortex A-53 processor, the modules work well as gateways and also allow customers to run local analytics, which enables offloading of cloud computing locally to boost latency and responsiveness. The ARTIK 7 module provides unrivaled connectivity, with built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, Thread and GbE MAC interfaces. It has a high-end multimedia processor for video and audio processing. The pre-installed Linux® operating system (OS) speeds time to revenue by providing a powerful OS supported by an extensive developer community.  The ARTIK 7 module is RF pre-certified and features enterprise-class security.

• Device management: the new SAMSUNG ARTIK modules are designed to work out of the box with the powerful SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud, an open data-exchange platform that connects devices, applications and other clouds, enabling the Interoperability of Things. Device manufacturers can now monitor and manage their fleet of deployed devices, both edge nodes and gateways, using SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud. They can uniquely identify each device, monitor its connectivity status, manage properties, such as firmware version and battery levels, and remotely execute functions on the device, including reboot, factory reset, firmware update, and reset error code.

An Expanded Partner Ecosystem

Today’s announcement is further endorsed by the addition of leading global distributors, service providers and technology solution partners. Together these partners provide a wide range of services and capabilities to help companies seamlessly build innovative IoT solutions and get them to market faster.

“Naver is leveraging the SAMSUNG ARTIK platform and partner ecosystem to introduce a new voice-controlled smart home assistant called AMICA as an entry into the world of IoT,” said Chang Song, CTO of Naver Corporation, a leading portal in Korea that invests heavily in the development of new technologies. “AMICA, running on the SAMSUNG ARTIK platform, will enable advanced natural language processing that can usher in exciting new IoT applications and consumer products. By partnering with Samsung, we can effectively grow our opportunities in IoT across Asia. Additionally, Naver developers can soon access SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud via a single sign-on, which will further speed new product development.”

“The SAMSUNG ARTIK platform delivers modular solutions with integrated connectivity and cloud enablement,” said Aiden Mitchell, Vice President of Global IoT Solutions at Arrow Electronics.  “We are pleased to support the SAMSUNG ARTIK platform with its low-power edge, control and gateway solutions, as the integration will help speed customers in their IoT development and time to market.”

“Samsung is a key partner and we look forward to offering our customers the option to purchase SAMSUNG ARTIK modules, thereby providing them with a powerful new way to build IoT products,” said Yunshik Kim, Executive Vice President at MUJIN. “We support Samsung’s vision for an end-to-end IoT platform and we are excited to take this step together as the Korean distributor for SAMSUNG ARTIK modules.”

As a proud member of the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), a leading IoT industry standard group, Samsung is also bringing open IoT technologies to advance interoperability between connected devices and enable the full operating potential of IoT by leveraging the SAMSUNG ARTIK platform and IoTivity open-source software.

The new SAMSUNG ARTIK modules are available for order immediately and worldwide through distribution partners, Arrow, Digi-Key and Mujin.  You can find more information about the Samsung ARTIK platform and development tools at www.artik.io.

About the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC)
SSIC is a global organization within Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. focused on innovation and new business creation, headquartered in Silicon Valley and with offices in Korea, Israel, France, and the U.K.  SSIC’s mission is to develop and accelerate disruptive technologies through open innovation, investments, and acquisitions by working in collaboration with entrepreneurs and strategic partners to enhance people’s lives and to help make the world a better place.

This collaboration aims to combine IoT, scientifically validated bio sensors, advanced multi-modal technology, and comprehensive nutritional approach to provide people with entirely new awareness into health and wellness.  In addition, the collaboration aims to empower individuals to better manage their own health and wellbeing by providing relevant and contextual recommendations around nutrition, lifestyle, and fitness, to help individuals live healthier and better lives.

“We are delighted to enter this collaboration with a global leader in the field of sensor technologies,” said Stefan Catsicas, Nestlé Chief Technology Officer. “It will advance our Nutrition, Health and Wellness strategy, to support people who want to live a healthier lifestyle.”

“We’re excited about the breakthroughs this collaboration will bring,” said Young Sohn, President and Chief Strategy Officer, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. “Today, we live in an era of smarter living brought about by the convergence of technology and life science. It’s an era where the data from smart sensors and devices in our daily life such as mobile phones, wearables, and smart refrigerators can help us to understand our nutrition and activity and to guide us towards a healthier lifestyle.

By combining the Samsung ARTIK IoT platform vision, deep semiconductor expertise, and a global platform of smart device solutions, together with Nestlé’s expertise in nutrition and biomedical science, the collaboration aims to better understand the voice of the body and empower millions of people to live well and be well.

The relationship extends beyond what millions of consumers already enjoy and experience with the global brands of Nestlé and Samsung. What makes this collaboration meaningful is that it combines digital and comprehensive nutritional sciences in a way that has great potential for worldwide reach. This relationship is underpinned by extensive research, the innovative, visionary people inside Samsung and Nestlé, and the recognition of this collaboration synergy.

Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center and Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences will work towards the development of a new digital health platform to provide more personal and meaningful insights that inspire healthy living.

More details about the platform are expected when the first pilots begin in early 2017.

About Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences
Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences carries out fundamental research for the understanding of health and disease and for developing science-based targeted nutritional solutions for the maintenance of health. It is based on the campus of the world-renowned Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale) in Lausanne, Switzerland, and is part of Nestlé’s global R&D network. https://www.nestleinstitutehealthsciences.com/

About the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC)
SSIC is a global organization within Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. focused on innovation and new business creation, headquartered in Silicon Valley and with offices in Korea, Israel, France, and the U.K.  SSIC’s mission is to develop and accelerate disruptive technologies through open innovation, investments, and acquisitions by working in collaboration with entrepreneurs and strategic partners to enhance people’s lives and to help make the world a better place.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the Internet of Things, Samsung’s and Nestlé’s plans, the potential of the combined platform to produce new apps and services, and the ability of the collaboration to improve the health and wellness of individuals. These and any other forward-looking statements in this release are based on management’s current expectations of future events and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from those set forth in or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the changes in the digital health market and the regulatory environment, difficulties in integrating technologies of the two companies ,  inability of the companies to allocate sufficient financial and other resources to the collaboration; and early termination of the collaboration. The companies are providing the information in this release as of this date and do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Samsung Electronics today recognized five of the best and brightest computer science and engineering students in the U.S. as it announced the inaugural class of the Samsung PhD Fellowship. Each student will receive a Fellowship award of $50,000 as well as mentorship to support their ground-breaking research.

The new PhD Fellowship program rewards those who dare to innovate. Jointly sponsored by Samsung Semiconductor and the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC), the program recognizes outstanding Ph.D. students working in five areas: Software and Memory System Solutions for Data Centers; Low-Power CPU and System IP Architecture and Designs; Advanced Semiconductor Devices, Materials and Simulation; Internet of Things; and Smart Machines.

Samsung launched the Fellowship program with a call for partner universities to nominate outstanding students working on the above topics. Twelve of the best-qualified nominees were selected as Finalists and invited to showcase events at the new headquarters in Silicon Valley or at the Samsung Austin R&D Center. Each student Finalist presented his or her research proposal to an audience of Samsung engineers, Lab directors, and innovation leaders and met many of them for interviews as well. Following these events, the five Fellows were selected from this terrific group.

Each Fellow will be connected to an engineer from one of the Samsung Semiconductor or SSIC Labs in Silicon Valley or Austin. This mentor will provide an industry perspective on their research and will invite the student to join Samsung for an internship.

“We are thrilled to be supporting these outstanding students through our Fellowship program. Samsung strives to be a leader in the creation of new technology, and a great way to do that is by supporting basic research and PhD training,” said Stefan Heuser, VP of Operations and Innovation for SSIC. “We were very impressed by the students nominated by the universities—all of them have made an impact in key areas of research. The Finalists were an even stronger group, and we are confident that they will become leaders in their fields. But the five Fellows are truly exceptional, and we look forward to working with them in the coming year. We thank the universities and all of the student nominees for their efforts and for their interest in our program.”

Following are the five Samsung PhD Fellows for 2016-2017:

• Dinesh Jayaraman, “Embodied Learning for Visual Recognition”
  • Nominating professor: Kristen Grauman, University of Texas at Austin

• Jiajun Wu, “Computational Perception of Physical Object Properties”
  • Nominating professors: William Freeman and Joshua Tenenbaum, MIT

• Joy Arulraj, “Rethinking Database Systems for Next-Generation Memory Technologies and Real-Time Analytics”
  • Nominating professor: Andy Pavlo, Carnegie Mellon University

• Niranjini Rajagopal, “Sensor Fusion and Automatic Infrastructure Mapping for Indoor Localization Systems”
  • Nominating professors: Anthony Rowe and Bruno Sinopoli, Carnegie Mellon University

• Wooseok Lee, “Exploring Future Mobile Heterogeneous Multicore System Architectures”
  • Nominating professors: Lizy John and Andreas Gerstlauer, University of Texas at Austin

Nominations for next year’s PhD Fellowship program will open in September 2016. Additional information about the Fellowship program can be found at: http://www.samsung.com/us/labs/fellowship/index.html

About the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center

SSIC is a global organization with the core missions of open innovation in collaboration with entrepreneurs and strategic partners, investments in disruptive technologies and startups, and new business creation through M&A and partnerships. With offices in Silicon Valley, Korea, Israel, France and the U.K., SSIC’s focus areas include cloud infrastructure, smart health, Internet of Things and smart machines.

About Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.

Samsung Semiconductor, Inc., based in a new state-of-the-art headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley, is a multi-billion dollar subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. The organization provides the world’s most advanced technology for use in smartphones, consumer electronics, computing platforms, as well as servers and other data center infrastructure. Among the products developed and sold by Samsung Semiconductor are state-of-the-art memory, logic, solid state drives, LED components and LCD/OLED displays, which are enabling today’s most efficient, connected digital devices. Samsung Semiconductor also has a research and innovation center with numerous labs contributing to research and product design in logic, memory, image sensors, displays and mobile technologies.