Uber Tries To Make Amends With $5.5 Million Gift To Carnegie Mellon University

Do you remember when Uber poached approximately 50 scientists working on self-driving car technology at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center earlier this year? And do you recall the fact that Uber had been partnering with CMU to research building its own autonomous vehicles, but then pulled out from a massive venture funding war chest to hire away a lot of CMU’s talent for its Uber Advanced Technologies Center?

At that time, Uber left what had been a leading robotics research institution in crisis, according to reports by the Wall Street Journal. Over the course of a few short months, the research center suffered the loss of a significant portion of its senior staff and a reported $13 million in expected contracts slated to be overseen by scientists who wound up leaving for Uber.

Well, after those significantly shady moves, Uber now appears to be publicly trying to win back the trust and respect of the academic community by announcing a $5.5 million gift to CMU, with the money intended to support the hiring of a new robotics faculty chair and three fellowships.

“Partnerships between corporations and universities can be so powerful,” wrote Uber CEO Travis Kalanick in a statement. “Tech companies, by their nature, focus on nearer-term engineering challenges that can push their business forward, while universities work to advance the state of the art.”

The gift extends the original partnership between Uber and CMU, which included an undisclosed amount of funding from Uber.

For Uber, being seen as an ally to the academic community could prove to be an important factor in achieving the company’s long-term goal to control a significant portion of the future world of commercially available self-driving cars. Although the company has billions of dollars in the bank, Uber will still likely require help in perfecting the technology that could eventually replace human drivers, and in turn, the company could save massive amounts of money in its future operations.

Uber has been very open about its interest in driverless cars, and it recently announced another academic partnership, this time with the University of Arizona’s College of Optical Science to work on technologies that are involved in mapping and safety.

It appears that Uber understands the important role that the academic community plays in the development and implementation of self-driving cars on our roads, and its $5.5 million gift to Carnegie Mellon University will certainly be put to good use. But will the money prove to be enough to convince other academic institutions that the company can be trusted, considering Uber’s shifty dealings with CMU earlier this year?