Google has created a dedicated machine learning research group in Europe, based in the companys Zurich office.

The group – known as Google Research, Europe – will develop products and carry out research, focused on three broad areas: machine intelligence, natural language processing, and machine perception. Google mentions improvements to machine learning infrastructure and working with linguists on natural language understanding as two key projects.

The Zurich office is already Google’s largest engineering base outside the US, and is responsible for the tech behind Knowledge Graph and the conversation engine powering the recently-unveiled Google Assistant.

“Europe is home to some of the world’s premier technical universities, making it an ideal place to build a top-notch research team,” said Emmanuel Mogenet, head of Google Research, Europe. “We look forward to collaborating with all the excellent Computer Science research that is coming from the region, and hope to contribute towards the wider academic community through our publications and academic support.”

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