• Bank of Ireland, Shutterstock and Dell Technologies amongst those recognised for innovation in Artificial Intelligence.
• Entries from Trinity College Dublin, Ulster University, University College Dublin and TU Dublin reflect an increase in academic research in AI.
• 5 new awards including Women in AI Person of the Year and Best Application of AI in Healthcare.

AI Ireland are delighted to announce the lucky finalists for the 4th annual AI Awards, which will take place at the Gibson Hotel in Dublin’s Docklands on Wednesday 23rd of November.

The Awards, which are part of the not-for-profit organisation AI Ireland, support the growth and development of Data Science, Machine learning, and Artificial Intelligence in Ireland. This year also saw the introduction of five new categories including AI Person of the Year and Women in AI Person of the Year to celebrate the individual achievements of AI and Data professionals in the field who are applying AI to help solve some of the biggest challenges facing our society today.

Microsoft Ireland is the headline sponsor of the 2022 AI Awards, which is also supported by Alldus International, the SFI ADAPT Centre, CCT College Dublin, IDA Ireland and Mazars.

Without further ado, check out this year’s finalists below.

Best Application of AI in a Large Enterprise

Allstate Northern Ireland – for the rollout of their Legal Automation Toolkit which automates the gathering of relevant data, the generation and completion of legal documents and the correct placement of the documents in the legal departments existing document management platform.

AXA Ireland – for their Auto-docs solution, which processes incoming documents and classifies them automatically. This ultimately benefits the customers from the added automation with a faster resolution of claims and AXA benefits from cost savings with faster settlements.

Bank of Ireland – for the implementation of their Downstream User Table, which identifies the maturity journey of a cohort of machine learning models implemented for customer propensity modelling with the aim to offer a single view of validated, accurate and ready to use output for downstream users for a variety of purposes.

Dell Technologies – for their “Contact Connect AI” project which achieves their mission to prevent and reduce issues faced by customers with their products, thus driving analytics, connecting data at scale across the customer journey and providing recommendations and resolutions to customers.

Best Use of AI in an SME

Getlocal.ie – which allows consumers to take control of where they purchase online and discover what local businesses around them have to offer. The platform utilises AI across all primary operations and functions, from Retailer information ingestion and Product Classification to Search functions using ANN computational models.

Kinesense – for their AI-centric research project, namely the Visual Intelligence Search Platform (VISP), which seeks to improve workflows for transcoding, analysing, and distributing videos using deep learning video analytics and cloud-based processing technologies.

Rinocloud – for their work with Skin Trust Club applying ML Models with an in-home skin microbiome test allowing people who want to be informed of their skin type and allowing them to make informed choices when it comes to what products are best suited to their skin.

Sonalake – for their solution which is designed to automate anomaly detection and to provide accurate, real-time insights regardless of how many metrics a network service provider might track. The solution monitors and analyses the network data and detects unexpected changes whose root causes warrant investigation.

Best Application of AI in a Startup

OpaMind – An AI-Powered digital voice diary improving mental health and well-being support. The OPA mind digital solution removes the stigma in the first step of reaching out for help by using an AI-powered app, available 24/7 without the need to talk to another person and provide an instant personalised mental health assistant.

Probvision – for their easy-to-assemble AI security camera and pocket-size AI personnel computer with dual thermal and optical sensors that can help constantly monitor people’s health, protect business assets, detect early emergencies and improve premises energy efficiency.

SeamlessCARE Ltd. – for their AI application Empathic that helps non-verbal people to independently communicate. It uses AI to interpret short recordings of non-verbal vocalisations & support people with communication difficulties due to autism, stroke, dementia, intellectual disability and a wide range of other conditions.

Shopbox – for their AI-powered adaptive shopping experience platform. By presenting relevant suggestions based on customer interests and behaviour, Shopbox provides a uniquely tailored shopping experience. It delivers for online retailers large and small, an Amazon-style personalised shopping experience, without the hefty price tag. 

Best Application of AI to achieve Social Good

AI_Premie UCD –  who are saving lives of mothers and babies using AI. A multidisciplinary team led by University College Dublin combines AI with patented biomarkers and clinical expertise to accurately diagnose pre-eclampsia and predict the patient’s future outcome.

Akara Robotics – for their robot Violet, the first clinical-grade fully autonomous UV disinfection robot. Rolled out in the midst of Covid-19, Violet uses advanced sensing and AI abilities that allow it to traverse complex hospital environments and closely control the parts of the room that are irradiated.

SFI ADAPT Centre – for their project N-Light – led by Dr. Susan McKeever and Christina Thorpe from TUDublin – who are developing an AI-driven platform that identifies patterns applying patterns of child sexual abuse and grooming behaviours from child victim reports.

The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland – who developed a suite of deep-learning models capable of transcribing most handwritten historical texts to produce the largest single release of transcribed handwritten documents ever to preserve original sources of Irish history for the next generation of historical researchers.

AI Person of the Year

Dr. Amelia Kelly – Amelia is the VP of Speech Technology at SoapBox Labs and has more than a decade of experience in speech signal processing, ML, NLP and AI. She has been instrumental in driving the culture and approach in how they build, model and test their speech technology at Soapbox Labs.

Dr. Alessandra Sala – Alessandra is passionate in applying advanced analytics, machine learning, and computational models with the focus of transferring innovation from research to products. She also fosters diversity, inclusion and equity for women and minorities while encouraging a global ethical approach in AI.

Dr. Luca Longo – Luca is the general chair of the National Irish Conference of AI and Cognitive Science demonstrating his commitment to engaging and serving the wider research Irish community and expanding its reputation within Europe. He has recently achieved international recognition in the field of Explainable AI. 

Nabanita Roy – Nabanita is the team lead at ACI Worldwide for a new innovative technology that uses AI to write code bases for unit testing on existing code repositories. Nabanita has contributed significantly in incrementally building out the POCs to bring this new technology to market. 

Women in AI Person of the Year

Amy Awad – Amy is the Co-Founder and CSO at Opa Mind, and an AI Consultant in Digital and Emerging technology Department at EY. Amy has over a decade experience in AI research and leading AI projects in DCU, UCD and Opa Mind, and she is also part of the EY AI Lab that aims to help companies leverage emerging AI based tech. She is also part of the Women in Tech EY and other initiatives that empower women to start and progress in their Tech career journey.

Liliya Akhtyamova – Liliya is a mentor for Women in AI Ireland and other initiatives that empower women to start and progress in their AI career journey. She is a Data Scientist at iCIMS, where she builds Talent Cloud AI solutions, helping hundreds of thousands of people around the globe find the right career path.

Dr. Susie Harding – Susie has a unique combination of theoretical expertise from her PhD in Biostatistics at UCD, coupled with more than a decade’s experience building big data, behavioural science-driven AI solutions at some of the world’s largest online gaming sites and now with arvoia.

Terri O’Donovan – Terri has over 14 years of experience in Janssen across various functions including creating the first Janssen Digital & Technology department. She played a critical role within the JSI Expansion Project as System User supporting the design, startup phases and the introduction of new technologies.

Young AI Role Model of the Year

Eoin Delaney, Insight Centre for Data Analytics – for his research within Explainable AI (XAI).  Eoin developed a wholly-new, counterfactual technique designed to handle time-series data and demonstrated this technique in the prediction of milk supply on over 2,000 Irish dairy farms over extended time periods.

Farooq Shaikh, Sonalake – for his outstanding contribution to the Sonalake data analytics team, growing AIOps space and how it relates to Sonalake’s network service analytics product. He also takes responsibility for mentoring students hired as part of their graduate programme.

James Brosnan, ACI Worlwide – for his work in performance testing on the Data Science team. James has worked to ensure their models are tested in new innovative ways at exceedingly high throughputs. He has helped test their platform at 1000s of transactions per second in only a few months in the job. 

Kevin Quinlan, ESB – for his role in role in driving analytics in ESB which could have a long-term impact on the energy system and climate in Ireland. Kevin has delivered numerous high value projects, including the Development, Planning and Reporting tool he developed for the Smart Metering project. 

Best Application of AI in an Academic Research Body

AI_PREMie UCD – who are saving lives of mothers and babies using AI. A multidisciplinary team led by University College Dublin combines AI with patented biomarkers and clinical expertise to accurately diagnose pre-eclampsia and predict the patient’s future outcome.

Intelligent Systems Research Centre, Ulster University – Led by Ciaran Cooney for his work in novel deep learning architecture design used to decode brain activity correlated with overt and imagined speech, and an innovative experimental paradigm targeted at understanding the effects of multiple conditions on speech decoding.

Tyndall National Institute & ISRC Ulster University – for their SENDoc (Smart sENsor Devices fOr rehabilitation and Connected health) project, which aims to apply connected health concepts through innovative wearable sensor technology to improve the quality-of-life of aging communities in northern rural remote areas.

ADAPT Centre, Trinity College Dublin – for their spinout startup UniCOOK, which is an AI engine that uses machine learning to analyse digital recipes, automatically building a storyboard designed to be inclusive for all. It also automates the linking of ingredient terms to products in a retailer’s database, resulting in greater sales.

Best Application of AI in a Student Project

Alessandro Ragano – A PhD Student at Insight Centre for Data Analytics in UCD who combined his two passions as a musician and a computer scientist for a project that achieved four main objectives to improve sound archive quality and help to develop AI based tools to make audio cultural heritage more accessible. 

Gregory Balogh and Anchit Bagath – for their Energia Trading Student Project which applies AI to optimise their portfolio utilising the fundamental market data and develop an algorithm that creates strategies and provides pathways to show the most economical ways to trade electricity in the Irish Single Electricity Market.

Eoin Delaney – 3rd year PhD student at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics & VistaMilk SFI Research Centre in UCD for his research on Explainable AI (XAI), specifically on how black-box AI models can be explained to developers and end-users using counterfactual explanations.

Gabriel Bueno Pimentel Borges – A recent Masters graduate from CCT College Dublin whose dissertation dived into computer vision studies applied to Augmentative and Alternative Communication in order to create a classification tool to classify 20 signs of Lámh, the key word signing (KWS) language in Ireland.

Best Use of AI in a Consumer/Customer Service Application

Genesys – for their AI-powered Predictive Routing solution that matches customers to agents in real-time by using AI to curate hundreds of features and create machine learning models to predict outcomes of potential matches improving critical business KPIs, such as reduction of call handling time.

Shopbox – for their AI-powered adaptive shopping experience platform. By presenting relevant suggestions based on customer interests and behaviour, the platform provides a uniquely tailored shopping experience. It delivers for online retailers large and small, an Amazon-style personalised shopping experience, without the hefty price tag.

Sonalake – for their work to forecast Received Signal Level (RSL), one of the most important mobile Internet QoS (Quality of Service) indicators, based on time series analysis and considering external information about weather conditions due to the effect they cause on mobile Internet QoS.

Webio – for their own proprietary Conversational AI (NLP) Engine which specifically identifies the intents and entities associated with credit and collections conversations. This enables Webio to understand what the customer is trying to achieve more effectively than generic solutions.

Best Application of AI in Healthcare

Akara Robotics – A spin-out from Trinity College Dublin, Akara developed Violet, the first clinical-grade fully autonomous UV disinfection robot. Violet uses advanced sensing and AI abilities that allow it to traverse complex hospital environments and closely control the parts of the room that are irradiated.

Axial3D – A Belfast-based company that develops AI-based software solutions that automatically convert hard-to-understand 2D medical scans into incredibly precise, patient-specific 3D models at scale and at a price point that is accessible for all. 

OpaMind – for their AI-Powered digital voice diary improving mental health and well-being support. The OPA mind digital solution removes the stigma in the first step of reaching out for help by using an AI-powered app, available 24/7 without the need to talk to another person and provide instant personalized mental health assistant.

Rinocloud – for their work with Skin Trust Club in applying Machine Learning Models with an in-home skin microbiome test. This allows people who want to be informed of their skin type and allows them to make informed choices when it comes to what products are best suited to their skin.

Best Use of Responsible AI & Ethics

ACI Worldwide – Limerick-based payments company who make responsible use of their machine learning models by demystifying the information from traditional black-box models and present them in simple ways that bring trust to customers. 

SFI ADAPT Centre – The PROTECT Network on AI Data Governance at Trinity College Dublin investigates methods to protect the rights and interests of individuals impacted by the continuous large-scale analysis of personal data, while still enabling the economy and society to benefit from rapid innovation.

Shutterstock – For establishing guiding principles and common practice towards Ethical AI through their four pillars initiative – Creating Diversity, Audited Process, Diverse and Inclusive teams, and Ethical Training – to ensure that their content is diverse and authentically representative of their global customers and community.

Webio – Webio’s proprietary Conversational (NLP) Engine gives a person the opportunity to speak to a trained operative while ensuring conversations remain private and that the information shared is not used in any manner than intended by the customer.

Tickets are on sale now to join us this November as we celebrate the very best innovation and projects within AI in Ireland.