Success for Essex at Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership Awards 2022

The University of Essex has been recognised for its Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) success at a prestigious Innovate UK Awards ceremony, with Dr Faiyaz Doctor picking up the national KTP Academic of the Year Award.

Professor Berthold Lausen was also shortlisted in the KTP Academic of the Year category and Essex’s KTP team was also nominated for the Best Knowledge Base KTP Support Team Award.

With more than 800 inspiring collaborations currently happening across the country, the KTP Awards recognise the people and partnerships behind the UK’s most innovative and successful KTP projects. This was the inaugural year for the Academic of the Year category and Dr Doctor received his award from  Knowledge Transfer Partnerships Manager at Innovate UK Richard Lamb and awards host Professor Suzannah Lipscomb.

Embedding innovative data-driven solutions into business

Dr Doctor from the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering took home KTP Academic of the Year for his KTP with Mediterranean Shipping Company (UK) Ltd. to better utilise its operational and financial data using AI and simulation modelling.

Mediterranean Shipping Company (UK) Ltd. which has its UK headquarters in Ipswich, is a world leader in global container shipping and haulage and the main objective of the project is to embed data-first decision-making, by channelling the vast data resources to develop predictive modelling capacity, with the intention of improving efficiency and accuracy across their supply chain.

Thanks to Dr Doctor’s leadership and support, with hardly a year since the start of the project, the KTP has already attained some key achievements.

Dr Doctor said: “The partnership has already developed transformative computational intelligence-based simulation models supported by data processing pipelines for optimising the repositioning and distribution of containers across MSC’s ocean, rail and haulage networks. We are now looking to refine and evaluate the efficacy of these models and embed them as part of MSC’s business intelligence processes. Planned outputs are a research paper around the novel contributions of the work and investigating other related areas of interest to MSC such as understanding patterns associated to the behaviours of their customers to further improve services.”

Driving business success by harnessing artificial intelligence

Professor Lausen, from School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science , was also shortlisted for KTP Academic of the Year for his project with London-based Profusion, a data consultancy that specialises in predictive modelling, email marketing, business intelligence and customer satisfaction.

The partnership has been focused on developing a new product called AI Marketer, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to empower businesses and charities to make smarter, more targeted campaigns. This new marketing tool will streamline campaigns for customers and provide more accurate and timely recommendations for an improved customer experience.

Nominated for Best Knowledge Base KTP Support Team

The dedicated KTP team at Essex has grown the University’s KTP portfolio from eight projects in 2017 to over 40 projects in 2022, with no signs of this growth rate slowing. This has seen Essex become the number one institution in the UK for active KTPs in the last year.

Part of Business Engagement within the Research and Enterprise Office, the KTP team is dedicated to looking after the portfolio from early scoping conversations to partnership and project development, through application stage and throughout the project life cycle right up to final reports.

Find out more

Discover more about our KTP portfolio and other ways of working with world-leading academics from the University of Essex by visiting: www.essex.ac.uk/business