Starlab NV/SA was a multidisciplinary, blue sky research institute established to serve as an incubator for long-term and basic research in the spirit of

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

Xerox PARC PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xer ...

, and Interval Research. Its primary headquarters was based in

Brussels, Belgium Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

from 1996 to 2001. A second base of operations, Starlab Barcelona, was established in 2000 and remains in operation.

Research

At its peak, Starlab employed over 130 scientists from thirty-six nationalities. Starlab projects included intelligent clothing,

stem cell In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can differentiate into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type of ...

research, emotics, transarchitecture,

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist human ...

theoretical physics Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experi ...

, e.g., the possibility of

time travel Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a ...

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

quantum computation Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Thoug ...

quantum information Quantum information is the information of the state of a quantum system. It is the basic entity of study in quantum information theory, and can be manipulated using quantum information processing techniques. Quantum information refers to both t ...

, art,

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

neuroscience Neuroscience is the science, scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a Multidisciplinary approach, multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, an ...

new media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. ...

, materials science,

protein folding Protein folding is the physical process by which a protein chain is translated to its native three-dimensional structure, typically a "folded" conformation by which the protein becomes biologically functional. Via an expeditious and reprodu ...

nanoelectronics Nanoelectronics refers to the use of nanotechnology in electronic components. The term covers a diverse set of devices and materials, with the common characteristic that they are so small that inter-atomic interactions and quantum mechanical ...

, and wearable computing. These research lines were grouped under the acronym “BANG,” or Bits, Atoms, Neurons, Genes, later adopted by MIT Media Lab in 2002.Remembering Starlab
/ref> The lab sponsored and collaborated with other labs and organized several international conferences and open research symposia.

Members

Starlab's principal investors included venture capitalist Walter de Brouwer, founder and chief executive officer,

founder

Nicholas Negroponte Nicholas Negroponte (born December 1, 1943) is a Greek American architect. He is the founder and chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also founded the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC). Negroponte ...

, and Pythagorus investment fund manager Johan Konings. Walter Van de Velde served as chief scientific officer. Giulio Ruffini continues to serve as scientific officer for Starlab's Barcelona division. Academic and corporate partners received shared intellectual property rights to research and patents generated by the lab.

Closure

Starlab's business model depended largely upon third-party investment to sustain its operations. When the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Comp ...

burst, the loss of a critical group of investors forced the lab to close its doors in 2001. The lab's assets were liquidated, and the former embassy building inhabited by the lab was purchased by the Brussels regional government.

Starlab DF2 (Deep Future 2) Barcelona

The surviving research division in Barcelona, Starlab DF2, or "Deep Future 2," adopted a different business strategy, focusing on specialized, direct contracts with ESA under support of the Catalan and Spanish Governments. Founded by Manel Adell
Giulio Ruffini
and Ana Maiques
Starlab Barcelona
maintains the interdisciplinary spirit of Starlab Brussels, but focuses on neuroscience technologies and applications. The lab has been awarded the Barcelona Innovation prize and other awards. It has produced spinoff Neuroelectrics.

Spinoffs

Some of the

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...

generated by Starlab research projects was purchased by investors or continued at university and research centers worldwide.

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is ...

purchased the intellectual property rights to intelligent clothing project i-wear, which won the Avantex 2000 Innovation Prize. Bioprocessors, a biotechnology spinoff, transitioned to

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Count ...

. ''Pajamanation'', a global marketplace for outsourcing microjobs, launched in fifty countries in 2006. Starlab Barcelona (2000) currently focuses on applied research initiatives in neuroscience.
Neuroelectrics
is a spinoff from Starlab Barcelona (2011) developing brain stimulation solutions for the clinical sector. It is currently creating personalized computational brain stimulation technologies within th
Neurotwin
(AD) an
Galvani
(focal epilepsy) projects.

Legacy

Starlab was featured in a Discovery Channel Special and frequently cited by the international press. The lab has since become subject of a theatre play by

Jack Klaff Jack Klaff is a South African-born actor, writer and academic. He has held professorships at Princeton University and Starlab. Amongst his early screen roles were in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) as Red Four and For Your Eyes Only ( ...

at the

Edinburgh Festival __NOTOC__ This is a list of arts and cultural festivals regularly taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland. The city has become known for its festivals since the establishment in 1947 of the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Fe ...

, and a

Gartner Gartner, Inc is a technological research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut that conducts research on technology and shares this research both through private consulting as well as executive programs and conferences. Its clients ...

case study.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Starlab Archive

Starlab Barcelona

Starlab Discovery Channel

Laboratories in Belgium 1990s in Brussels