AT&T Labs Research — Leading Invention, Driving Innovation

AT&T Researchers at NetMob 2013 Conference

Data from mobile devices is useful in understanding human mobility and has wide applicability in mobile computing, urban planning, and ecology. To help address the privacy concerns of using such data, AT&T researchers will present two papers at this year’s NetMob conference that describe different aspects of WHERE, a data-modeling approach that creates synthetic data from probability distributions of actual data. For more details, including times of the presentations, go here. 

Interactions Corporation Will License AT&T WATSON

AT&T and Interactions Corporation announced a licensing agreement to incorporate AT&T Watson(SM) speech technology into Interactions' speech-enabled virtual-assistant applications for businesses. The companies will also collaborate on speech-powered virtual assistants for customer care. "What we're delivering represents a quantum leap beyond anything that's been possible with applications built around conventional ASR technology," said Michael Iacobucci, CEO of Interactions.

U-verse® Easy Remote Wins Edison Awards Gold Medal

AT&T's U-verse^® Easy Remote app, which turns an iPhone or iPad into a voice-controlled remote, was the Gold Medal winner in the Entertainment Category at this year's Edison Awards™.  For more information about the technology behind Easy Remote, see this article.

The Edison Awards are focused on innovators as much as innovations, and seek to reward "game changing" products, services and excellence in innovation.

New Models Project Dramatically Greener Arctic

Arctic wooded areas may expand as much as 50% in the next decades say a team of scientists who used new machine-learning algorithms to model the redistribution of vegetation in the Arctic under future climate conditions. The models suggest warming is accelerating faster than expected. The team, led by Richard Pearson of the American Museum of Natural History, included AT&T researcher Steven Phillips and several university scientists. Results were published in Nature Climate Change.

AT&T Sets New Distance Record over Optical Fiber

AT&T has announced that researchers transmitted eight 495-Gb/s DWDM signals over 12,000 km of optical fiber. As each signal fit in 100GHz, the result has a high spectral efficiency (4.125 b/s/Hz) and sets a new distance record for spectral efficiencies over 2 b/s/Hz. This suggests that the existing ITU-T wavelength grid can accommodate the faster Ethernet speed (400 Gb/s) being contemplated by the IEEE. A paper detailing the experiment was presented at OFC/NFOEC.

Columbia University to Honor Alicia Abella

Columbia University will recognize Alicia Abella for professional and community accomplishments by awarding her its Medal for Excellence at commencement exercises May 22. This is the first time the award, given annually since 1929, is being conferred on an engineer. Abella is executive director of the Innovative Devices and Services Research Department at AT&T Research and is an advocate for encouraging minorities and women to pursue careers in science and engineering.