The mission of the Emerging Research Lab is to identify and nurture new promising research areas in the disciplines of computing and engineering that show high research values as well as substantial commercial potential. The Emerging Research Lab aims to host up to five research teams conducting pioneer research in their respective fields with the objective of growing them into full-fledged research centers of excellence with close links to the industry in the near future.

Following an open call-for-proposal and a rigorous selection process, the Emerging Research Lab has accepted two research proposals. The first proposal aims to design biological-inspired systems using the human immunity system as the foundation of modeling and apply them to complex engineering problems. The second proposal aims to develop autonomous systems with high-level cognitive functions, including attention, vision, adaptation, reasoning, and awareness, and apply them to robotic and information brokering applications. In addition to supporting existing research areas, the Emerging Research Lab will constantly track the technology landscape in computing and engineering and invite research proposals for new initiatives.