Sustainability Innovation Workshop

October 20, 2008

HP Labs is committed to open innovation with the academic community and our partners in both industry and government. Given that sustainability is a critical research theme at HP Labs, we hosted a workshop to promote collaborative research in the area of sustainability within, and resulting from, the IT industry. This workshop brought together leading researchers from academia and industry, HPL researchers, leaders and technical contributors from HP business units, and representatives from government agencies, to identify common research interests and collaboration opportunities in the area of sustainability. It provided an opportunity to forge external partnerships that will help fulfill critical research needs to accelerate the impact that IT can have on this critical world issue. The goals were twofold:
1. identify the key research challenges and critical needs in sustainability in areas relevant to HP Labs; and
2. identify collaboration opportunities and discuss funding models.

The workshop was organized around five themes each with supporting talks and a breakout session. These include:
  • Sustainability Hub
  • Microgrid and Distributed Power
  • Knowledge Discovery
  • Modeling and Designing for Sustainability and
  • Sustainable IT.

The talks were from both external participants and HP researchers on each theme. Break-out sessions for each theme allowed participants to further discuss mutual interests and collaboration opportunities.  There will be a proposal submitted to NSF to fund a follow-on in depth workshop to further refine a more detailed research agenda for ‘Information Technology for Sustainable Ecosystems’.

At the workshop, we were pleased to welcome as speakers: Prith Banerjee, SVP Research and Director of HP Labs and Chandrakant Patel, HP Fellow and Director of the Sustainable IT Ecosystem Lab. Learn more about the workshop program here.

Visit the Sustainable IT Ecosystem Lab’s home page.

For more information on HP's work in this area, see Innovating for the Environment.

Open Innovation Office home page.