Working with business

Highlights: Strategic partnerships

• Major partnership with telecoms giant BT.
• UK Government has invested in Essex as part of a multi-million-pound national data infrastructure.
• Collaborations with Suffolk County Council and Essex County Council, one of the largest local authorities in England.
• Award-winning Knowledge Transfer Partnerships improving productivity and performance and driving innovation.

The power of collaboration

We help businesses drive innovation, productivity and competitiveness and we provide new insights into their customers to help companies deliver even better experiences. Our pioneering data analytics and data science experts make working with Essex an easy decision.

We are the leading university in the East of England and London for Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs), the flagship Innovate UK programme. This national scheme part-funds a collaboration between your business and our University. Work with our world-class researchers to improve competitiveness, productivity and performance.

Project showcase

• BT: Remote workforce management system (.pdf)
• Signal: Retrieving, cleaning and analysing huge data sets (.pdf)
• Port of Felixstowe: Scheduling (.pdf)

Influencing public policy

We’re the first university in the UK to appoint a Chief Scientific Adviser to a local government authority. Dr Alex Quiroz-Flores, Reader at the Department of Government and Chief Scientific Adviser for IADS, uses data to help Essex County Council reshape public policy and service delivery.

Essex County Council is one of England’s largest local authorities. As Chief Scientific Adviser, Alex is transforming the way public services are being delivered by embedding data science into government decision making.

We’re also helping Essex County Council and Suffolk County Council use technology to improve services for their 2.5 million residents. We’re working with them to improve services for vulnerable people – using our expertise in data analytics to assess risks and evaluate the impact of their initiatives.

Project showcase

• Essex County Council and Suffolk County Council: Improving services for vulnerable people
• EUROMOD: Predicting policy impact
• Milan Police Department: Predicting crime

Support for innovators

Our award-winning Games Hub on our Knowledge Gateway research and technology park delivers a hugely successful training programme for digital creative entrepreneurs supported by leading industry professionals.

The new companies being created by the Games Hub are receiving attention from Mashable and Tech Radar for their addictive games apps.

It adjoins our Start-up Hub, fostering entrepreneurship through hot-desk space and hands-on business support for innovators including students and graduate start-ups. The Start-up Hub is now home to 14 businesses ranging from retail websites to healthcare apps using AI.

Secure and ethical access to data

We not only develop powerful new techniques and methods to extract insight from data, we’re also advocates for using data ethically. We drive archival innovation. Our unique data infrastructure is designed to offer secure access to unique data assets.

We host the UK Data Service’s SecureLab, where researchers can access personal government data in a secure environment. As the first university in the country to provide this service, we now advise governments around the world in how to secure data access facilities.

Our data curation experts are internationally recognised. Professor Matthew Woollard and his team have become the go-to-experts for help on data management issues. We lead the way in good practice on ethical uses of data and data sharing protocols which place data owners and controllers at the centre.

Our scientists also developed the UK Economic and Social Research Council’s Research Data Policy, and we’ve given advice to a huge range of government organisations. Thanks to our expertise, valuable social and economic data is secure and accessible.