The program is a part of HP Labs' Open Innovation Office and is responsible for deepening HP Labs' strategic collaborations with academia, the government and the commercial sector to produce mutually beneficial, high-impact research.

Towards the Awards, academia need to submit their proposals in breakthrough research in the areas of dynamic cloud services, content transformation, information management, digital commercial print, immersive interaction, intelligent infrastructure and sustainability. Eligible applicants are requested to make their submissions before March 2, 2009.

HP will award selected applicants funding for one year. Each award will include support for one graduate student researcher, who will also be eligible to attend the HP Labs Open Innovation Summit scheduled later this year.

"Last year we had a great set of research proposals from all over the world and the research projects of IIT Chennai & IIT Mumbai were amongst few selected. This year too we look forward to reviewing the proposals and investing in projects that drive open innovation and set the agenda for breakthrough research relevant to technology customers." said Vinnie Jauhari, Region Lead-India, HP Labs Open Innovation Office, HP India

The program guidelines and the online submission tool are available at www.hpl.hp.com/open_innovation/irp. Also, as part of the proposal submission process the applicants' institution must accept the HP Labs innovation Research Programme 2009 CRA (Collaborative Research Agreement) that can be viewed and downloaded at www.hpl.hp.com/open_innovation/irp/HPL_IRP_CRA_2009.pdf.