The School of Engineering (SOE) at the Lebanese American University (LAU) has initiated a collaboration between LAU and BMW Group since 2018 offering select students internships at the company’s seat in Munich, and promoting collaborative projects. In 2021, the collaboration was extended to IdealWorks, a company owned by BMW Group specializing in logistics robotics. Since its launching, more than 125 distinguished engineering students (7-to-12 students every year) have conducted 6-to-9 month internships fully funded by BMW Group and IdealWorks. BMW Group has also offered more than five Ph.D. scholarships and multiple full-time job opportunities. To create a more sustainable industry ecosystem, Dr. Joe Tekli, Associate Professor of Computer Engineering and initiator of the LAU-BMW Group collaboration, has co-founded and is serving as Director of the InMind Academy, a non-profit professional training program spearheaded by LAU in collaboration with BMW Group, Idealworks, InMind .ai, and Palantir Technologies. Funded by the industry partners, the academy offers two-month hands-on trainings to university students, before they are evaluated and selected to conduct their internships in Munich. While this collaboration was initially limited to LAU, the InMind Academy now serves nine of the top universities in Lebanon, and has trained more than 140 students since Spring 2022. In Spring 2024, InMind Academy established institutional partnerships with IEEE Lebanon Section, IEEE Young Professionals Lebanon, ACM SIGAPP French Chapter, and CNRS Lebanon, providing this collaboration with national exposure and connecting with the local ecosystem. This allows LAU’s SOE and InMind Academy to help support the tech industry in Lebanon. In parallel, Dr. Tekli and his colleagues in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at LAU, have vigorously activated the LAU IEEE Student Chapter starting Fall 2023, motivating the creation of five IEEE student clubs focused on the topics of the collaboration, including: Artificial Intelligence, Logistics Automation, Robotics, Power and Energy, and Women in Engineering. With the support of the IEEE student clubs, LAU has hosted the BMW Group Beirut Hackathon 2019 at LAU Beirut campus on October 8-9, 2019, hosting 74 students from eight major universities in Lebanon, competing in a 24-hour AI programming marathon. Dr. Tekli has also served as lead member of SORDI Hackathon 2022 organization team, in collaboration with BMW Group, Nvidia, Idealworkds, InMind .ai, and Microsoft, hosting 2,117 international participants. Furthermore, a joint LAU-BMW Workshop Day on Vision Intelligence and Robots Applications (VIRA) has been established and organized for six consecutive years (VIRA 2018-24), allowing students who completed their internships and who are conducting their PhDs in Munich to present their works. Consequently, BMW Group has donated to LAU a special edition 2020 hybrid electric i8 Boxster, to conduct collaborative academic and research projects. Together with BMW Group, InMind Academy, and InMind .ai, LAU’s SOE has succeeded in establishing a self-sustained and growing entrepreneurial ecosystem where students are educated at University, receive a professional training at the Academy, conduct their internship in BMW Group and IdealWorks in Germany, and return to work and service BMW Group and its industry partners from Lebanon.

LAU-BMW Group collaboration coordinator: Dr. Joe Tekli