Last week, industry and academics came together for Edinburgh’s biggest Academic Industry Meeting day (AIMday) yet, on the theme of data, AI and digital technologies.
Ahead of the AIMday, organisations submitted business challenges they face in ‘digital frontier’ areas such as generative AI, optimisation and electronics.
And, on the day, company representatives met with expert, interdisciplinary academics to discuss how leading-edge research and technologies can help solve their problems, and contribute to improvements in society.
Dr Robert Nicol, Technology Development Manager at semiconductor company STMicroelectronics, attended an AIMday last year that, following a feasibility study, led to a PhD project within the University’s Sensing, Processing, and AI for Defence and Security Centre for Doctoral Training. This helps the company with image sensing technology improvements. This year, Dr Nicol came to discuss generative AI and dataset labelling. He said:
Working with academics helps us take forward ideas, improve our techniques and take costs out of manufacturing.
If we only look at what’s within our own knowledge scope, we will plateau as a business. This is a way to look at what advanced techniques will be available in the future, and plan for that.
It gives us access to different ideas and technologies from different fields and, academics often have a different take; each of these are useful to challenge our own thinking. ”
Dr Alexander Serb worked on last year’s project with STMicroelectronics. He said:
Understanding what problems are out there in the world helps us as academics to arrive at fundamental solutions that can be applied to many different situations.
Working with companies helps us scope out ideas that have an applied component when applying for funding. And, through studentships, it helps us fulfil our role of supplying a workforce that is fit for purpose. ”
Twenty-five AIMday workshops at the Bayes Centre – the University’s AI and data science hub – spanned topics from air pollution, to rest for paramedics, to enabling large language models to provide appropriate counselling responses across diverse populations.
Academics attended from schools including Informatics, Maths, Engineering, Geosciences and the Business School.
Organiser Hjalmar Eriksson, of Edinburgh Innovations, the University’s commercialisation service, said:
The day is supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s Impact Acceleration Account (EPSRC IAA), with the aim of engaging academic experts with research users, so that new techniques and knowledge can generate positive impact for society. ”
EPSRC IAA also provide £10k grants for collaborative projects coming out of AIMday workshops to get off the ground.
AIMdays can lead to long-term collaborations, such as between the University and multinational engineering services company Babcock, which resulted in FastBlade – the world’s first rapid fatigue test facility for tidal turbine blades.
AIMday 2023 led to several projects with Police Scotland, including with the Neuropolitics Research Lab at the School of Social and Political Science to measure officers’ physiological responses to receiving data, to determine the most effective way of delivering live information to them during a callout.
AIMday® is a registered trademark of Uppsala University.
