Last week, Nuria Oliver from Telefonica R&D came to MIT to present part of the research work Telefonica is doing in Barcelona. The goal of the talk and the visit was to take other researchers from MIT to the recently created Telefonica R&D center in Barcelona.
It was the first time I met Nuria. I had heard of her back in the 90s when she was cited as 1 of the 40 most influential young persons in Spain by El Pais and also as one of the best students of the decade by a national student newspaper. She later did her PhD here at MIT and then spent 7 years at Microsoft Research in Seattle. Since a couple of months ago, she is back in Spain working as Scientific Director at the new Telefonica R&D center in Barcelona (some news in Spanish).
I am very happy that Telefonica has taken the initiative to do world class research from Spain. During the last years, Telefonica R&D was perceived as a company doing only "D" rather than "R&D". But since a couple of years ago, Telefonica is recruiting some of the best researchers in the world, despite those having offers from places like Google, IBM or Microsoft. For instance, last year, Pablo Rodriguez, who had lead research projects at Microsoft Research and Bell Labs, joined the labs. Pablo was at Cambridge, UK, at the same time I was there, next to my office and collaborating with people in my research lab. Pablo convinced Alberto Lopez to join the lab last October and he is telling me how happy he is about the research environment he has found there. Alberto is one of my best friends and just finished his PhD with Xiaodong Wang, my PhD advisor at Columbia University.
I have also heard that David del Val has accepted a position at Telefonica R&D. In 1996, David started with colleagues from Stanford University VXtreme, a company for video transmission over the Internet. In 1997 the company was acquired by Microsoft and the product later become the integral part of Windows Media.
Alejandro Jaimes (I overlapped with him at Columbia University, NY, during one year) has also recently decided to join the labs. And I am hearing that other international researchers have also decided to move to Barcelona.
Nuria mentioned how surprised she was about the environment that Telefonica has created in Barcelona, with competitive salaries and cutting edge research projects. It seems like a place that is going to attract more talent and create great impact in their research areas.
I hope that the ecosystem of world class researchers highly respected in industry and academia attracts more talent and attention and creates spinoffs and startups in Barcelona.
Deutsche Telekom created a similar initiative in Berlin about 3 years ago. Pablo Vidales, also a good friend, has been in this lab from the beginning. It happens that Pablo was visiting me in Boston last week at the same time Nuria was visiting MIT.
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