Hewlett-Packard (HP) on Monday said it is funding more academic research projects to boost its collaboration with the world's leading universities.

HP Labs, the central research arm of the world's largest technology company, announced that it will offer new awards to 60 projects at 46 universities in 12 countries and regions as part of its Innovation Research Program.

Among the award winners are researchers from China's Peking University and Tsinghua University.

HP said this year's awardees will work with the company's researchers on topics such as intelligent infrastructure and cloud computing.

The number of projects newly funded jumped more than 30 percent from last year, when the program started and awards were granted to 45 projects at 35 universities worldwide.

According to HP, the awards provide project funding of up to 100,000 U.S. dollars for one year to each academic institution and are renewable for a total of three years based on research progress.

"The Innovation Research Program is a core pillar of HP's advanced research strategy. It allows the company to tap the brightest minds all over the world to tackle the most challenging issues facing the technical community," Prith Banerjee, senior vice president of research at HP, said in a statement.

"Fostering this type of collaboration between industry and academia breeds a long-term partnership that is more important now than ever before," he noted.