Research Grants, Trends + Research
Rewarding the best projects in language innovation
Imminent was founded to help innovators who share the goal of making it easier for everyone living in our multilingual world to understand and be understood by everyone else. Imminent builds a bridge between the world of research and the corporate world by supporting research through scientific publications, interviews, and annual grants, funding groundbreaking projects in the language industry.
With the Imminent Research Grants project, each year, Imminent allocates €100,000 to fund five original research projects with grants of €20,000 each to explore the most advanced frontiers in the world of language services. Imminent expects the call to appeal to startuppers, researchers, innovators, authors, university labs, organizations and companies. A research grant will be assigned to one project in each of the following categories:
Discover some of the awarded projects
Making machines speak in Yorùbá
Research grant awarded in 2022 – Linguistic data
A report on the research funded by Imminent’s Grant for the collection of speech data for the Yorùbá language.
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When speed meets precision
Research Grant awarded in 2022 – Machine learning and algorithms for translation
A report on the research funded by Imminent’s Grant for the introduction of parallel decoding for speeding up translation models and language models.
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Machine learning algorithms for translation
Problem examples
How to improve the efficiency (quantity, quality, speed, adaptability, context awareness) of learning algorithms for machine translation.
Alternative focus
Machine learning, artificial intelligence, algorithms.
Opportunity
Support the creation of the next generation of machine technology.
Linguistic data
Problem examples
How to collect and organise multilingual data,
data cleaning algorithms, data collection, rare language collection, unbiasing.
Alternative focus
Data mining, knowledge management, data collection, web scraping, audio data, video data.
Opportunity
Improve the knowledge base upon which machine learning is developed.
Human-computer interaction
Problem examples
How to engage professional human translators in a symbiosis with machine translation, equitable incentives
for human participation in the growth of machine translation, rational and emotional rewards, interface design, seamless human-computer interaction.
Alternative focus
Design, engagement, empowerment, interface, interaction, gamification.
Opportunity
Give value back to humans.
Language economics
Problem examples
The economic benefit of multilingualism, new indicators and models.
Alternative focus
Investment, planning, discovery, human resources management, supply chain management, international trade.
Opportunity
Improve management and entrepreneurship in a multilingual environment.
Neuroscience of language
Problem examples
How the brain works in language learning and translation.
Alternative focus
Experiments, theories, applications, neuroscience, psychology, social psychology.
Opportunity
How humans trust translations, how they open up to new languages, what is the difference between humans and machines in learning languages?
Photo credit: Google Deepmind – Unsplash
Imminent Research Grants
$100,000 to fund language technology innovators
Imminent was founded to help innovators who share the goal of making it easier for everyone living in our multilingual world to understand and be understood by all others. Each year, Imminent allocate $100,000 to fund five original research projects to explore the most advanced frontiers in the world of language services. Topics: Language economics – Linguistic data – Machine learning algorithms for translation – Human-computer interaction – The neuroscience of language.
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