{"id":63995,"date":"2015-11-11T13:16:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T13:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=b3adc0206091c7726371bfc87b4416f3"},"modified":"2015-11-12T12:45:22","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T12:45:22","slug":"news-story-media-tracking-firm-wins-knowledge-transfer-partnership-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=63995","title":{"rendered":"News story: Media tracking firm wins Knowledge Transfer Partnership 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Updated:<\/em> Corrected university details for business leader of tomorrow Edward Fitzpatrick – working with Ulster university rather than Queen’s Belfast.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

Developing natural language processing apps<\/h2>\n

The aim of Signal Media<\/a>\u2019s KTP with the university\u2019s School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering<\/a> was to develop the innovative natural language processing applications that would underpin the new company\u2019s products and services.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Food Revolution Daily<\/a> site.<\/p>\n

Signal achieves fast growth in staff numbers<\/h2>\n

The collaboration with Essex University led to considerable growth as Signal\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a31.2 million in private investment in 2015<\/h2>\n

The company has raised \u00a31.2 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). <\/p>\n

Dr Martinez-Alvarez said: <\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Professor Udo Kruschwitz, the academic lead for the partnership, added: <\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Signal and Essex University are co-organising a workshop<\/a> on recent trends in information retrieval at next year\u2019s ECIR conference in Italy.<\/p>\n

Business Leaders of Tomorrow<\/h2>\n

Dr Martinez-Alvarez was named a Business Leader of Tomorrow in the 2014 awards. This year\u2019s winners are:<\/p>\n

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\"Winners<\/div>
Winners of the KTP Business Leaders of Tomorrow awards at Innovate 2015<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n