Google has awarded $5.7 million in research to universities in the United States in areas that the company believes have the potential to generate revenue.

Part of the funding ($1.35 million) is going to research on the use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring. This research will be conducted by the University of Washington and UCLA.

?Like a university, we devote significant energy to research across a wide array of subjects ? from semantics to help improve search, to ways we can improve the efficiency of our data centers,? said Alfred Spector, vice president of research and special initiatives at Google, Mountain View, CA, in a blog post.

?Along with our internal efforts, we've long invested in building a strong, mutually beneficial relationship with universities and the research community," he said.  

Google gave the University of Washington a total of $1.35 million for research on mobile phones as data collection devices.

Gaetano Borriello, a researcher, won the three-year grant and gets $900,000 up front and $450,000 a year going forward.

Mr. Borriello?s project is called "Open Data: Data Collection from Mobile Devices."

Apparently, Google?s grant is an extention to the research that Mr. Borriello started last year with some students.

The research began in Google?s offices in Seattle and was initially meant to build an open-source Open Data Kit for Android.

Google?s awards, totaling $5.7 million, cover four areas: machine learning, the use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring, energy efficiency in computing, and privacy.

These are all areas in which Google is already deeply invested, and yet there is a long way to go.

The unrestricted grants are for two to three years, and the recipients will have the advantage of access to Google tools, technologies and expertise.

Here is a breakdown of the research grants awarded:

Use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring: Gaetano Borriello, University of Washington and Deborah Estrin, UCLA

Machine Learning: William Cohen, Christos Faloutsos, Garth Gibson and Tom Mitchell, Carnegie Mellon University

Energy efficiency in computing:
? Ricardo Bianchini, Rutgers, Fred Chong, UC Santa Barbara, Thomas F. Wenisch, University of Michigan and Sudhanva Gurumurthi, University of Virginia
? Christos Kozyrakis, Mark Horowitz, Benjamin Lee, Nick McKeown and Mendel Rosenblum, Stanford
? David G. Andersen and Mor. Harchol-Balter, Carnegie Mellon University
? Tajana Simunic Rosing, Steven Swanson and Amin Vahdat, UCSD
? Thomas F. Wenisch, Trevor Mudge, David Blaauw and Dennis Sylvester, University of Michigan
? Margaret Martonosi, Jennifer Rexford, Michael Freedman and Mung Chiang, Princeton

Privacy:
? Ed Felten, Princeton
? Lorrie Cranor, Alessandro Acquisti and Norman Sadeh, Carnegie Mellon University
? Ryan Calo, Stanford CIS
? Andy Hopper, Cambridge University Computing Laboratory

?We look forward to working with these researchers over the coming years,? Mr. Spector said in the blog post. ?And, as we continue to identify key areas of research that are of mutual interest to both university researchers and Google, we will provide awards to support these collaborations.?