Academic engagement at Adarga

Adarga is committed to building close and enduring relationships with academic and research institutions within the UK and globally. We do this to ensure that the AI community continues to push the development of innovative technology and of future scientists and engineers. 

The UK has one of the world’s most vibrant and successful academic communities for Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science. This level of academic research and education provides the foundations for companies across the nation to use AI to accelerate their technologies. 

Without a vibrant, diverse, and successful academic community companies like Adarga would not be able to deliver the benefits of our platform across the private and public sectors. 

Some of our activities are outlined below:

• Internship Schemes: Adarga runs an annual summer Internship scheme open to both undergraduates and post-graduates. We also encourage all interns to return to Adarga, embedding them in our functioning teams to support their transition from Campus to Career.
• Research Sponsorship: We sponsor MSc and PhD level student research at the University of Exeter and the University of Bristol.
• Symposium: We host an annual AI symposium, open to all, exploring cutting edge aspects of AI with panels of experts and keynote thought-leaders and thinkers.
• Academic Conferences: Our scientists actively contribute to academic conferences as associate editors, reviewers, technical chairs, and members of organising committees.
• Hackathons: Our hackathons allow our teams to work on dedicated challenges that explore the application of AI: in 2020, we worked with the  British Army on using AI to solve the issue of counter wildlife trafficking trade in Africa.
• Sponsorship: Adarga sponsors conferences and academic awards like Complenet 2020.
• Guest lectures: Our data scientists regularly support undergraduate and postgraduate courses as guest lecturers offering an industry perspective on real-world/industry applications of AI and data science.
• From industry to academia: Our CEO, Rob Bassett Cross, takes part in academic advisory boards at the University of Exeter and the Institute of Coding. Our Head of Applied Science, Dr Daniel Clarke, holds a Faculty position with Cranfield University and is a member of the Business Advisory Board at Milton Keynes University.
• Staff development: For in-house development and learning, we hold regular reading groups on academic papers, offer a training budget for each Adarganaut, and we also support professional development wherever possible.
• School outreach: We have also worked with the Cheam School and King’s College School to create an Introduction to AI lecture for Years 7 and 8. We believe that enthusiasm from the start of the academic career can build our best budding engineers and data scientists.

Scientific advisory group

In addition, Adarga also has a Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) which is comprised of internationally recognised experts in the fields of academia, research, software engineering and data science. The aim of the group is to connect Adarga with the latest science and technology research developments within academia.

The group is chaired by Professor John P. Cunningham, Professor of AI, Columbia University, and is comprised of:

• Dr Hywel Williams, AI & Data Science Institute, University of Exeter
• Professor Peter Flach, Professor of AI, University of Bristol
• Dr Simon King, Professor of Speech Processing, University of Edinburgh
• Derek Wise, VP Technology, Oracle Data Cloud 

Ground-breaking scientific ideas require both the underpinning research and the platform to communicate that work. This is why Adarga's approach to academic engagement is not just about communications, but also about Adarga staying at the cutting edge of AI techniques and research.

As a business, we look forward to continuing to build synergies and bridges between academia and industry, as the benefit to all is clear to see.