The relationship between public research institutes and private companies is one of the original and strategic elements to which CREF intends to make an important and original contribution.

A project of this type, implemented and in full operational development, is the joint initiative between our institution and the research centre of the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris. Sony CSL supports 12 researchers already working within the Cref with a specific collaborative project on topics of common interest. This project represents an external resource of approximately one million euros that the Cref will acquire in terms of salaries and research contributions. The topics of this joint laboratory are innovation, creativity, the dynamics of information (fake news, etc.) and, in particular, the 17 SDG goals related to social and economic sustainability.

Another particularly interesting collaboration is with PI CAMPUS (https://picampus.it and https://translated.com). This relatively young company has achieved great international success with translations based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods, and is also an incubator for over 50 start-ups in various AI-related fields. For PI CAMPUS, CREF developed an index of the commercial importance of different languages for different industrial sectors and products (T-index), which was implemented in the company’s strategies. PI CAMPUS supported a three-year PhD and various other CREF initiatives for a value of approximately €200,000.