Chief - Dr Juzar Motiwalla

The genesis. When I was Director of ISS, we had completed two rounds of partnerships with IBM. We were in search for the next major partnership, to continue nurturing world-class research at ISS.

I made a couple of visits to Apple, where I met Dave Nagel, responsible for all R&D at Apple. He expressed a keen interest in artificial intelligence research. I invited him and his team to visit us in Singapore where he could be introduced to the work of the teams led by our star researchers in fuzzy logic and Chinese multilingual processing. I proposed a US$20m joint research center, unheard of at that time, and we would jointly fund it. Apple then proposed working on Asian languages.

I did not have the budget approved at my end, but I figured that in the worst case I would use our existing research budget. EDB provided strong support and I obtained full budget allocation from NSTB. Vijay Mehta provided keen guidance from his perch at NSTB, and it was very sad when he passed away with his wife in a truly unfortunate car crash in Western Australia.

George White was nominated as the first Apple-ISS Director and he got it off to a solid footing. Kai-Fu Lee, the promising new star at Apple Research then came on board and we were Co-Chairmen of the Steering Committee. He proposed Jean-Luc as the new Director of the Center.

A special word must be entered for Kai-Fu. He was decisive in his planning and judgement as soon as he took the reins as Apple’s lead on the Steering Committee, with far-sighted directions and clear focus. And he was always the gracious host when I visited Cupertino.

Jean-Luc had tremendous energy, assembled a star team and forged partnerships in China. We got to know each other extremely well as we continued our interactions when he continued to create the magic at Kent Ridge Digital Labs (KRDL).

Although the Apple-ISS Center disbanded due to the transient financial woes at Apple, the Center’s reputation as a leading R&D center had spread. Microsoft and Ericsson came calling. None other than Bill Gates visited Singapore and expressed interest in understanding the work done at the Center. A joint Center with Ericsson was set up subsequently.

The Apple-ISS Center was at the forefront of technology that today is pervasive in mobility. It was truly a project we are all proud of, with lasting friendships made by all.