Intelligent Systems Lab

Heriot-Watt University

Consultancy

There are many ways in which ISL and businesses can interact, with considerable benefit to the business partner. The portfolio of expertise in ISL covers data-mining, logistics, optimisation, innovative design, web intelligence, language technologies, and more. Our staff have successful experience in helping companies produce leading-edge new products, radically improved services, and fundamental improvements in their market positioning. Examples of collaborative projects include each of the following:

Much improved, and faster, optimisation of infrastructure parameters in large telecommunications networks (for a large telco);
Prediction of future demand, and prediction of emerging fault scenarios (for a plant services company);
Optimisation of quality of service for users of a large distributed database (for a large telco);
Developing a new product for the Lab Information Management market incorporating Artificial-Intelligence based planning (for a LIMS company).
Speedup and improvement of a market-specific search engine, which led to various major new contracts (for a web services company)
Certification of the stability of a distributed system;
Help with bidding in auctions.

ISL staff are open to a full range of collaborative models, ranging from individual consultancy, through funding mechanisms such as KTP and SCORE, through to direct industry sponsorship. We find that the primary opportunities for successful consultancy exist when the business partner can see the potential for incorporating computational intelligence into an existing software product, in this way potentially gaining a lead in their market. For example, if your product helps people to plan projects, then we can add mechanisms that automatically produce a range of viable project plans. If your product helps doctors to formulate diagnoses, we can add mechanisms that will automatically propose a range of diagnoses and attach a confidence factor to each; if your product is a two-or-more player game, we could add a virtual, intelligent, adaptive player that increases the market and attractiveness of your product.

The ISL is a research-led organisation, yet we are strongly motivated to collaborate with you, since this helps us maintain a portfolio of challenging and real tests of the fundamental computational technologies and ideas that we are developing. The possibilities for technology transfer are endless, and we are keen to discuss possibilities with you. If you are interested in potential collaboration, in the first instance please contact any member of ISL staff that you feel is most appropriate in your case, or if in doubt contact our group leader, Professor De Wilde (pdw@macs.hw.ac.uk).

Last updated 08 June 2011