Initiatives
The Sony Research Award Program
Open Collaboration to Support the Future of Technology
Mar 29, 2024
The Sony Research Award Program (RAP) is a sponsored research program designed to provide funding to university faculty and researchers for innovative and forward-thinking research projects that align with Sony’s interests and contribute to the advancement of technology in various fields. To find out more about this fascinating initiative, we spoke to Mark Ortiz, a Senior Manager at Sony who has been involved with the program since its inception in 2016.
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Mark Ortiz
Senior Manager
Innovation Strategy Group
Corporate Technology Strategy Division U.S. (CTSD US)
Sony Corporation of America
──First, could you please give us an overview of the Sony RAP. How does the Program work?
The main purpose of the Sony RAP is to build collaborative relationships between academia and Sony researchers by identifying technical areas of common interest with leading researchers. There are two award categories: the Faculty Innovation Award, which provides up to $100K USD in funding for cutting-edge research in Sony’s general areas of interest, and the Focused Research Award, which provides up to $150K USD for more specific areas. Every year, for two months in the summer, we make a call for proposals based on keywords or focused themes. We then collect all the submissions and distribute them to experts within the Sony group. Submissions undergo a rigorous evaluation process, modeled after a premier external research agency’s procedure, and are scored accordingly. After the scores are determined, we practice additional assessment to further narrow down the proposals to the final candidates. This process leads up to the award selection event held between January and March where the proposals are presented to the Sony RAP Management Team. This is where final decisions are made regarding the selection of award nominees.
There are very few leading universities that we haven’t collaborated with yet.
──How has it changed in terms of scale over the years?
We started the program in 2016, and in that first year, we chose six winners. The next year, in 2017, we had eight winners, which included three renewals from the previous year. If both sides are satisfied with the progress and the research is still relevant to Sony’s interest, we support renewals of the collaboration. For the first two years, we only had the IT category, but in 2018, we added “Devices & Materials” and “Biomedical & Life Science” categories and that’s when the things really started picking up speed. In that third year, we had a total of 21 winners; there were 18 new awards and three renewals, which included many world-leading universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University. In 2020, we went international and added 13 countries in Europe. And then in 2021, we opened the program up to India. At this point, we collaborate with many of the leading universities on this planet.
If we’re not talking to these people, we’re not on the cutting-edge.
──Why is open collaboration with universities so important for Sony?
Sony R&D has experts in each of its technical domains. However, with the high pace of technological advancement in most areas today, it’s almost impossible for any single company to have experts at the very leading edge of research in every single domain that Sony operates in. And while companies conduct R&D in a wide range of areas, collaboration with external organizations, including academia, allows the acquisition of new insights and perspectives, which enhances the potential for innovation.
There’s a saying, “There is no great genius without some touch of madness.” I think that the most innovative minds in academia are a little nutty, in that they think very differently. That is, their ideas are so good that you can’t tell if they’re brilliant or a little nutty at first. A famous example is the Sony Walkman. In the 1970s, an engineer said, “Let’s create portable music.” Of course, today, we all have portable music on our cellphones, but at that time, people probably thought he was a little nutty. That’s the kind of innovative thinking that we’re looking for with the Sony RAP. If we, as a company, are not talking to these super-innovative and brilliant people, then we’re not on the cutting edge.
RAP helps Sony’s new technology exploration and acquisition
──How about in terms of technologies? How has Sony benefited from RAP so far?
Thanks to the collaborative research with academia through RAP, Sony benefited significant progress in new technology exploration in a number of technical fields. Take metasurface flat optics for example. In theory, this technology allows you to create super-thin surfaces—thinner than the thickness of a hair on your head—that can emulate complex lenses. This opens up a whole new world of potential applications, especially in photography and imaging. Before Sony started the Sony RAP, we had an understanding of and involvement in metasurface flat optics, but we weren’t super advanced in this area. Now, I would say that we’re one of the leading companies, in term of knowledge in this area.
Another fascinating example is acoustic metamaterials. This technology allows us to customize listening environments by manipulating sound wavefronts, including, for example, making objects “acoustically invisible,” (a.k.a. acoustic cloaking). Have you ever been to a concert where you had to sit behind a column? It makes it really difficult to hear the music, right? Well, with this technology, you could theoretically make the column disappear acoustically. And the applications for just that function are huge. For example, in concept, it could be used to make parts of the car that interfere with audio sound disappear acoustically.
One final example is SPAD (Single-Photon Avalanche Diode) technology. SPADs are very compact and easy-to-use versions of older style photon counters that were very large, expensive, and cumbersome to use. In terms of application, imagine taking photos in what we now consider to be “pitch darkness.” With SPADs, this would be possible with proper rather sophisticated signal processing. And there are many other applications, some of which could potentially improve vehicle safety.
In each case, Sony was able to learn and acquire new technologies efficiently through research collaboration with academia which started with the Sony RAP.
We want to build whole new Sony divisions of innovations from the Sony RAP.
──Finally, please tell us about your goals for the future.
We are coming up on several milestones with the Sony RAP. Currently, we have about 166 research collaborations. Over the next couple of years, I’d like to see us hit our 200th collaboration. I would also like to see us collaborating with as many of the top universities in the world as possible. The year 2025 will be the 10th anniversary of our program, so that’s something that we’re looking forward to as well.
Looking at the bigger picture, I would say my dream is that we create not just one or two, but multiple whole new Sony divisions off of innovations that come out of the Sony RAP. So, not patents, not incremental improvements on existing products; whole new divisions dedicated to whole new lines of business that can contribute innovation, growth, and Kando to the Sony Group.
In summary, we’re looking for revolutions, not evolutions. We are targeting working with the world’s leading universities and researchers because we want to create revolutionary products. So, not baby steps; big thinking, big innovation. And I believe the Sony RAP could be a driving force to make the leap happen.
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For more information on the Sony Research Award Program (RAP), click here.
