It was a packed house at Dublin’s Gibson Hotel as over 200+ industry professionals, academics and enthusiasts came together to celebrate the very best of AI in Ireland at the inaugural AI Awards.
The AI Awards, powered by non-profit organization AI Ireland, was set up to demystify the mystery of all the latest applications and implications in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning on the island of Ireland. Yesterday’s Awards ceremony did just this.
Not only did we learn the first-ever winners of the AI Awards and some incredible presentations, but it also brought together over 200 people from a wide variety of fields who are working in AI, from cybersecurity to healthcare, autonomous vehicles, voice recognition technology, customer service, data management and more.
The event would not have been possible without our amazing sponsors. A massive thank you to principal sponsors Microsoft for all their guidance and support, and also to SAP, the ADAPT Centre, Alldus International, McKesson, Mazars, Technology Ireland ICT Skillnet and Advanced Metadata for backing this initiative.
Thank you to our speakers Microsoft Managing Director Cathriona Hallahan, Ken Finnegan, Alessandra Sala, Petronel Bigioi, Dr John Kelleher, James Hurley, Una Fitzpatrick, Orla Cullen and James Baker and also to our volunteers who helped out on the day.
A big thank you also goes out to our 25 judges for all their time and effort into helping decide the winners, to all 64 applicants who applied for the awards and last but not least, a massive thanks to everyone who attended on the day. We were delighted to have a full house at the Gibson Hotel and hope you all enjoyed it.
Check out the six lucky winners below:
Best Application of AI in an Academic Research Body Sponsored by Microsoft
Winner: INFANT Centre, University College Cork
The INFANT Research Centre is Ireland’s first dedicated translational research Centre, focused on maternal and child health, hosted by University College Cork. INFANT uses
Artificial Intelligence to develop solutions to improve health outcomes for mothers and their babies. Every year around the world, 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, 2.6M babies are
stillborn and further 2.6M babies die in their first month of life. Their aim is to meet the urgent demands for screening tests, diagnostics, therapeutics, enhanced nutrition and devices for
early identification, diagnosis and effective treatment to prevent these perinatal complications and associated adverse outcomes.
Best Use of AI in Sector Sponsored by ADAPT Centre
Winner: Nuritas
Founded in 2014, Nuritas is solving the unmet medical needs of the world with the unparalleled capability to develop preventative and curative peptide-based treatments for disease with industry leading speed and accuracy. The company’s unique, disruptive computational approach to discovery uses artificial intelligence, deep learning and genomics to rapidly and efficiently predict and then provide access to the most health-benefitting components hidden within food, called peptides, with in silico predictions validated by their in-house multidisciplinary team of scientists and laboratory.
Best Application of AI in a Consumer/Customer Service Sponsored by McKesson
Winner: Voysis
Voysis is a complete voice AI platform that enables natural language instruction, search and discovery across consumer and enterprise applications. The platform was built from the ground up by a team of scientists, engineers, and linguists with expertise in speech technologies as well as the application of end-to-end modeling approaches in cognitive computing and neural networks. Voysis
utilizes speech recognition, natural language processing and understanding, deep learning, and text to speech capabilities, all of which were developed in-house.
Best Application of AI in a Startup Sponsored by Alldus International
Winner: EdgeTier
The EdgeTier “Arthur” system is an intelligent “Agent Assistant”, that sits beside human agents in customer contact centres. Arthur analyses and understands text-based customer queries, prompts agents on what actions to take, and delivers personalised experiences for end-customers. Arthur balances the accuracy, availability, and speed of an advanced AI system
with the nuanced communication, complex decision making, and dynamic capabilities of human agents to achieve new levels of customer service efficiencies.
Best Application of AI in a Student Project Sponsored by Technology Ireland ICT Skillnet
Winner: Niamh Donelly, University College Dublin
Niamh’s project demonstrated that significant improvements in canopy coverage prediction accuracy could be achieved using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). Key outcomes of the
project included the creation of a novel dataset, the development of a robust data pipeline to allow for easy access of high-resolution satellite imagery from Google Earth, and an AI
prediction model capable of mapping canopy coverage to a degree of accuracy comparable with the best in the literature. A paper based on Niamh’s dissertation has been recently submitted to
AICS 2018, and further project collaborations with industry partners are planned for 2019.
Best Application of AI in a Large Enterprise Sponsored by SAP
Winner: McKesson
Currently ranked sixth on the FORTUNE 500, McKesson Corporation is a healthcare services and information technology company dedicated to making the business of healthcare run better.
Based in Cork, McKesson Labs, a newly formed software innovation team within McKesson Technology focusing on innovation, develops services and automation products, are creating a range of cyber-security applications aimed at tackling the threats towards breaching critical patient data.