Another year, another awe-inspiring KTP/EMI Associates’ Day at Sheffield Hallam University!
“KTP” stands for Knowledge Transfer Partnership, a partly government-funded programme to help UK businesses and universities to collaborate. It is a great way for companies to leverage state-of-the-art academic knowledge to solve their problems.
Our academic partner is Sheffield Hallam University, and their outstanding expertise have helped us to introduce some of our amazing new AI-powered technologies and increase business output during an extraordinarily challenging time in history.
Throughout our partnership, they have given us expert guidance, mentoring, and help hiring the best graduate talent from the University and beyond.
We have been working closely together with Sheffield Hallam, having completed a 2-year KTP project with them, and we are just coming to the end of an Enhanced Mentored Internship (EMI) project.
So this year, we celebrated our third KTP/EMI Associates’ Day – and it did not disappoint!
It was especially enjoyable seeing everyone face-to-face again after last year’s fully online event!
The event saw some sensational examples of current KTP and EMI projects, which were brimming with new ideas and technologies. We were also treated to a delicious dinner, superb networking event, and award presentations.
We heard from Dr Hywel Jones on the world of KTPs and EMIs, and we even heard about an exciting new opportunity that Innovate UK may be launching soon…
Accelerate Knowledge Transfer (AKT) projects could be very short-lived projects that complement an existing KTP project, providing opportunities to finish off a KTP or pursue a related side project.
We also saw some sensational examples of current KTP and EMI projects that Associates are currently working on – posters for 1st-year Associates and presentations for 2nd-year Associates.
Our very own Isham Iqbal gave a brilliant presentation on “Re-engineering a Cloud-Based Project Management Platform”, which talked about the benefits of cloud-based solutions, the techniques and technologies we’ve adopted, as well as challenges, opportunities, and future plans.
He expertly answered the follow-up questions from the audience, including one about how best to persuade Senior Management of the benefits of moving to the Cloud (this certainly wasn’t a challenge for us with our exceptionally forward-thinking and tech-savvy CEO, Jurga Zilinskiene MBE).
Guildhawk’s EMI programme may have less than a month left, but we have many more exciting collaboration opportunities with Sheffield Hallam University in the pipeline. As for our EMI Associate, Isham, he has proved he is worth his weight in gold and will be staying on with us after his EMI as a permanent Guildhawk employee.
A huge thanks to the KTP Team at Sheffield Hallam University, and everyone involved in hosting such a fantastically inspiring event. We look forward to seeing what magic Guildhawk and Sheffield Hallam’s combined talents and efforts can conjure up before next year’s event!