About the event:

Presenter: Gerry O'Hagan (Knowledge Transfer Adviser, Knowledge Transfer Network)
“Knowledge Transfer Partnerships: Accelerating Innovation”

The Knowledge Transfer Partnership programme has been supporting business led innovation for more than 40 years. The programme aims to stimulate economic growth for the UK economy by facilitating the transfer of knowledge and skills from the research base into organisations to create new value and embed new capabilities.
Gerry O'Hagan is a Knowledge Transfer Advisor with the Knowledge Transfer Network focusing primarily on supporting the KTP programme. He has a background in senior executive roles in business and non-executive roles in universities, experience which provides a perspective on the expectations and priorities for the stakeholders in the partnerships.

Presenter: Dan Walker (KTP Associate, Newcastle University)
“KTPs: Data Science in a Large Business”

ENGIE is a large global company with 160,000 employees in over 70 countries. They are a provider of energy and services focusing on production and supply of energy, facilities management and regeneration. There are large quantities of data available and a desire to become more skilled in the way that the data is used. Knowledge transfer partnerships is a scheme funded by Innovate UK. They are designed to embed technical knowledge into the company through the associate’s work by linking up with experienced academics at the university. This short talk will give a general overview of KTP’s and explain some examples of how a data science KTP has been beneficial to ENGIE.
Dan Walker is a data scientist at Newcastle University as part of a knowledge transfer partnership with ENGIE Services UK. He graduated from the same university in 2018 with an MSc in Mathematics and Statistics. In his work, he combines statistical techniques with some machine learning to solve a variety of business problems.

Presenter: Josh Myrans (KTP Associate, University of Exeter)
“KTPs: case study -  Automated detection of sewer faults” 

Every year water companies in the UK must survey thousands of kilometres of their sewer systems. This enables the effective management and maintenance of the network to avoid costly failures and pollution events. South West Water has entered a KTP with the University of Exeter to develop and deploy computer vision technologies capable of improving the accuracy and efficiency of the CCTV surveying practice. This talk will give an outline of the developed fault detection technology, discussing some of the key machine learning components whilst looking at how exactly the project fits into the KTP structure.
Josh Myrans is a Data Scientist at the University of Exeter partnered with the UK water company: South West Water. He graduated from the University of Exeter in 2014 with a BSc in computer Science and Mathematics, before continuing to complete his PhD in Water Informatics Engineering in 2018 (also at Exeter University). Josh has been working within South West Water as a KTP associate since November 2018, where he continues to develop his postgraduate research for practical application within the water industry.

Attendance is free and open to all, but pre-registration is required.