Media tracking firm wins Knowledge Transfer Partnership 2015
Signal Media and Essex University carry off 'Best of the Best' award after KTP associate joins company as head of research.
Best of the Best: Miguel Martinez-Alvarez and David Benigson, of Signal Media, with Professor Udo Kruschwitz, of Essex University (right)
A tie-up between a London-based media monitoring start-up and Essex University has been named Best Partnership in the annual Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) awards announced at Innovate UK 2015.
Developing natural language processing apps
The aim of Signal Media’s KTP with the university’s School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering was to develop the innovative natural language processing applications that would underpin the new company’s products and services.
Signal, founded in 2012 by David Benigson, now analyses more than 3.5 million blogs and news sources every day to create targeted feeds. As well as offering de-duplication and advanced filtering options, the software adapts and learns as the user interacts with it. Customers include Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Daily site.
Signal achieves fast growth in staff numbers
The collaboration with Essex University led to considerable growth as Signal’s staff numbers grew from 3 to 23 in less than 2 years. Miguel Martinez-Alvarez, the young graduate brought in at the outset to deliver the project as KTP associate, has since become head of research at Signal and a shareholder in the company.
£1.2 million in private investment in 2015
The company has raised £1.2 million through private investors this year. The partnership and its results also featured in many scientific publications and won the award for best demonstration at the European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR).
Dr Martinez-Alvarez said:
We developed our first prototype six months into the project. We are now 25 people, and our customers range from big corporates to SMEs. Without KTP it would have been very difficult to achieve that, especially being able to bring academic researchers into the business to work with the software developers.
Professor Udo Kruschwitz, the academic lead for the partnership, added:
The collaboration with Signal has been highly beneficial for all partners. There has already been a number of undergraduate and postgraduate students working at Signal via paid internships, and this is expected to continue.
Signal and Essex University are co-organising a workshop on recent trends in information retrieval at next year’s ECIR conference in Italy.
Business Leaders of Tomorrow
Dr Martinez-Alvarez was named a Business Leader of Tomorrow in the 2014 awards. This year’s winners are:
Winners of the KTP Business Leaders of Tomorrow awards at Innovate 2015
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Edward Fitzpatrick, working with Ulster university and MJM Marine, re-fitters for cruise liners, on laminate structures and new materials for maritime refurbishment
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Kieran Khamis, working with the University of Birmingham and RS Hydro on development of a fluorescence sensor for the water industry
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Nandagopal Lakshminarayanan, working with the University of Lincoln and Lincoln Security to develop secure software for electro-mechanical locks in high-security environments
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Catarina Marques, working with London South Bank University and Adande Refrigeration on a novel tempering cabinet as well as developing a new product development analysis tool
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Barry Moore, working with Teesside University and MTE Ltd to develop a bespoke manufacturing model for hazardous environments, mainly in the offshore oil and gas industry
The KTP Awards recognise the people and partnerships that are behind the most inspirational and successful KTP projects. Other categories and winners were:
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Research Councils UK (RCUK) award for benefit to society: leading Welsh homeless charity Llamau, Cardiff University and Kate Hodgson
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RCUK award for knowledge base impact: major vegetable producer Produce World, Cranfield University and Guy Thallon
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Award for engineering excellence: Southampton-based fibre laser manufacturer Fianium, University of Bath and James Stone
The Knowledge Transfer Partnerships programme has been helping businesses for 40 years to improve their competitiveness and productivity through better use of knowledge, technology and skills to be found within the UK knowledge base.
Updates to this page
Last updated 12 November 2015 + show all updates
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Corrected university details for business leader of tomorrow Edward Fitzpatrick - working with Ulster university rather than Queen's Belfast.
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First published.