Lockheed Martin and Khalifa University announced that they have signed a formal research partnership agreement aimed towards improving Lockheed Martin’s LM Wisdom® tool, a customizable Web and social media analytics tool.

Representatives from the University and Lockheed Martin met at the Abu Dhabi Campus of Khalifa University for a signing ceremony, in addition to meeting with the involved faculty and students.

The LM Wisdom® tool monitors and analyzes rapidly changing open source data, such as newspaper feeds and social media content, in near-real time, and distinguishes noise from high value information. It captures cultural context, trends, sentiment and influence, providing deeper situational awareness to customers.  The tool is especially beneficial to first responders, security and law enforcement agencies.

The agreement will provide Khalifa University with funding over a period of two years, during which time faculty and students will use computer engineering and other relevant techniques to perform comprehensive studies and analysis of the Arabic language and dialects. These analyses will help to build a detailed lexicon from which Lockheed Martin can build a Linguistic Feature Filter for LM Wisdom®.

“Big data analytics is one of the most important emerging research areas worldwide. We are very excited that our faculty and students will be engaged in this groundbreaking research jointly with an international industrial leader such as Lockheed Martin,” said Dr. Mohammed Al-Mualla, Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Khalifa University.

“This will no doubt enrich the experience of our faculty and students and will make their research of direct relevance to industry and the society. The research fits very well within the Security priority area of our strategic plan, which is closely aligned with the Abu Dhabi 2030 vision,” he added.

“We are excited about this partnership, not just for the present but for the potential follow-on work we may be able to continue with Khalifa University. Our partnership with the university is an investment in not only our future growth, but in helping to build local talent pools with the UAE,” explained Bob Eastman, Vice President for Lockheed Martin’s Information Systems and Global Solutions.

Khalifa University was established in February 2007 by a decree issued by the UAE President HH Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan to complement Abu Dhabi’s 2030 vision, which aims to build a knowledge-based economy that effectively contributes to the development of the UAE. The University’s main campus is located in Abu Dhabi, while it operates another campus in Sharjah.