Our judging panel have been very busy over the past two weeks but now we’re delighted to reveal the lucky nominees for the 2021 AI Awards.

We want to say a big thank you to everyone who applied for the AI Awards this year. We received some amazing applications and unfortunately not all of them could make it. Check out the list of this year’s finalists below.

Best Application of AI in a Large Enterprise (Sponsored by Microsoft)

ACI Worldwide – who developed Incremental Learning, a new patented technology that brings fraud prevention to a new era within the payment solutions sector.

Zalando – Europe’s leading online fashion platform, created a state-of-the-art NLP open-source framework Flair technique to augment customer services escalation across 23 countries.

Bank of Ireland – for their Next Best Action engine that utilised AI to transform its digital offering and offer every unit within the BOI Group a new channel of communication with their customers.

Shutterstock – who built a dataset curation system that is able to analyze 400m images which enables the fast and reliable creation of specialised datasets to train supervised machine learning models.

Best Application of AI to achieve Social Good (Sponsored by IDA Ireland)

Terrain AI – Based out of Maynooth University and co-funded by Microsoft Ireland and SFI,  Terrain-AI is focused on improving the understanding of the impact of human activity on land use and how it relates to climate change, with the aim of improving carbon measurement that will inform future carbon reduction strategies.

AI_PREMie – a multidisciplinary team led by University College Dublin  together with the National Maternity, the Rotunda, the Coombe Hospitals, and the SAS Institute who have developed a cutting-edge and unique AI-powered solution in the management of preeclampsia, which affects one in every 10 pregnancies.

Automated Regulatory Monitoring (ARM) – whose AI platform can review thousands of notifications every day to flag compliance-related risks, enabling financial organisations better identify and address issues that could impact financially vulnerable customers quickly and accurately.

ApisProtect – who provides real-time hive monitoring powered by intelligent sensor technology. ApisProtect gives beekeepers actionable insights and alerts to help prevent losses and increase colony productivity.

Best Application of AI in a Startup (Sponsored by Alldus International)

ByoWave – who make accessible and customisable video game controllers for people with disabilities. The organisation aims to address the exclusion and isolation felt by over 180 million people with disabilities due to inaccessible controllers.

EdgeTier – for WatchTower, which ingests and analyses the text contents of emails and chats between customers and agents in real time, as well
as metrics such as contact volumes, queue times etc. WatchTower’s AI  detects issues or unusual trends and informs contact center managers, often before they even know there’s a problem.

Protex AI – a Limerick-based computer vision-based and AI software company providing proactive safety technology to help companies reduce injuries in the workplace.

Think Biosolution – combines AI and data visualisation with medical devices to deliver the best-in-class patient-centric at-home chronic care for its Chronic Disease Prevention platform.

Best Application of AI in an Academic Research Body (Sponsored by RDI Hub)

INFANT Research Centre @ University College Cork – for its work using deep learning to detect neonatal seizure detection. They are developing an end-to-end diagnostics solution, which integrates state-of-the-art CNNs for neonatal seizure detection with a portable, wireless and low-power EEG acquisition device.

VistaMilk SFI Research Centre/Insight SFI Centre for Data Analytics @UCD – for their unique collaboration between Agri-Food and information communications technology (ICT) research institutes and leading Irish/multinational food and ICT companies.

Maynooth University for Terrain AI – which aims to understand the impact of human activity on land use and ultimately, as a driver of climate change for more sustainable land use.

Tyndall National Institute for Wearable AI – which focuses on AI-powered on-body wearable technology for healthcare & well-being applications, going from fundamental to industry-oriented research.

Intelligent Automation – Best Use of RPA & Cognitive (Sponsored by Mazars)

FIRE1 Foundry – who have developed a novel implantable sensor solution for remote monitoring of congestive heart failure patients in their home which is enhanced by Fire1’s continuous training of new predictive models adding diagnostic functionality to its innovative solution.

HealthBeacon – for their customized reminder system which is personalized and programmed to keep people on track and is aimed at those who administer their medication on a schedule regularly.

Webio – for its Conversational Middleware Service enabling organisations to connect applications, digital assets across different communications platforms (SMS, WhatsApp to Alexa).

Zalando – Europe’s leading online fashion platform, created a state-of-the-art NLP open-source framework Flair technique to augment customer services escalation across 23 countries.

Best Use of AI in a Consumer/Customer Service Application (Sponsored by ADAPT Centre)

Arvoia – offers its clients in the travel and mobility sector sophisticated, readily deployable AI driven prediction and personalisation products.

EdgeTier – for WatchTower, which ingests and analyses the text contents of emails and chats between customers and agents in real time, as well
as metrics such as contact volumes, queue times etc. WatchTower’s AI  detects issues or unusual trends and informs contact center managers, often before they even know there’s a problem.

ESB Data Analytics/Electric Ireland – who used a combination of AI data modelling and visualisation to better understand and deliver better customer service as part of its “Smarter Living Approach”.

Webio – was further nominated for its Conversational Middleware Service enabling organisations to connect applications, digital assets across different communications platforms (SMS, WhatsApp to Alexa)

Best Use of AI in Sector

CarTrawler – who has developed a full data-to-algorithm pipeline using robust, scalable software engineering principles that generate significantly better outcomes for customers with higher profitability for CarTrawler and its partners.

Cirdan Ltd – a leading provider of informatics and imaging solutions has utilised AI firstly with one AI algorithm running in its X-ray imaging product CoreLite to identify microcalcifications in breast biopsy. It also developed a second AI algorithm to successfully identify tumour tissue in Whole Slide Colon Polyp images.

Kinesense Ltd – is one of largest suppliers of computer vision and video analytics products to law enforcement and security sectors, who use the technology to search CCTV content in the course of criminal investigation. It uses a range of deep learning techniques for performing video content search and analysis, thereby dramatically reducing the time that personnel need to spend reviewing videos.

STATSports – who are the world-leading provider of wearable player tracking devices and analysis software, is leveraging data to improve performance with sporting teams around the world and how they have effectively utilised the cloud to provide additional services to their customers.

Best Application of AI in a Student Project

Edmond Keogh – a Master of Electronic and Computer Engineering student in the University of Limerick for his work with Provizio’s to perceive, predict and prevent automotive accidents in using proprietary long-range imaging sensors & AI on-the-edge.

Joe Linogao – a student researcher in the robotics and innovation lab (RAIL) in Trinity College Dublin who created a labelled dataset which he would then use to train deep learning models for object detectors to identify bacteria colonies on petri dishes.

Eoin Kenny– A PhD student in University College Dublin for his internationally recognised work on predictive AI modelling, explainable AI and precision agriculture to solve problems in crop-growth prediction for the dairy sector.

Yassir Houreh – An AI Graduate Masters student from the University of Limerick who has been shortlisted for his Hyper Neural Architecture Search for Image Segmentation research.

Congratulations to all the finalists and we look forward to seeing you all at the virtual awards ceremony on Thursday 25th of November.

The results will then be revealed at the awards ceremony this November in conjunction with headline sponsor Microsoft. Other sponsors include Alldus International, the ADAPT Centre, Mazars Ireland, Altada Technology Solutions, RDI Hub, CCT College, Tangent Trinity’s Ideas Workspace as well as partners IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland.

The AI Awards, powered by AI Ireland, is a non-profit community devoted to promoting AI in Ireland. The AI Awards aims to increase public awareness of Artificial Intelligence and bring academia and industry together to showcase the excellent work done on the island of Ireland.

You can register to join the virtual AI Awards ceremony by clicking here. 

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