Samsung Electronics is opening a new Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC), headquartered on Sand Hill Road, the Wall Street equivalent of venture capital, in Menlo Park, California. Samsung is also starting a new $100 million investment pool, the Samsung Catalyst Fund.

The SSIC will have offices in Korea and Israel, and is headed by Young Sohn, president and chief strategy officer of Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics.

Young Sohn: We see tremendous opportunities and transformations over the next five years driven by Big Data centered around mobility, cloud, and the Internet of Things, and Samsung will be a significant part of this revolution.

The focus of the SSIC, the Samsung Catalyst Fund, as well as the company’s $1 billion Samsung Ventures America Fund, is to create a mutually beneficial foundation for Samsung and innovators, and to work together on new technology that can drive future growth to the company, says Samsung. Initial focus areas include cloud infrastructure, mobile privacy, Internet of Things, human interface, and mobile health.

To jumpstart the $100 million Samsung Catalyst Fund, SSIC is holding a competition, the SamsungCreate Challenge, launching later in 2013. The program will encourage artists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and other innovators to leverage Samsung’s Device Solutions Architecture Platform.

[Image courtesy: Samsung]