BarCamp Scotland Edinburgh-Stanford Link Overview

The Edinburgh-Stanford Link Michael Clouser 03/03/2007 BarCamp Scotland

What is the Link?
A research collaboration between Edinburgh and Stanford Universities into speech and language technology, and related disciplines.
Each research project is jointly carried out on both sides of the Atlantic.
Funded by Scottish Enterprise, the Link works with companies and organisations to make its research applicable to business.
One way it does this is by creating state-of-the-art prototypes with commercial potential.
The commercialisation process favours Scottish companies for one year, after which time, technologies can be marketed around the world.

About Me
Associate w/ Edinburgh Stanford Link
Courses delivered online and off; working on building online course now
Linking companies with MSc students
Ph.D. Student at UoE – Entrepreneurship and Innovation (expected 2008)
-Earned MBA and BS from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (1999 and 1990 respectively)
Worked in Silicon Valley 5 years before coming to Edinburgh in 2004
Former Venture Capitalist for Dot Edu Ventures
Entrepreneur: Software, Internet, and Competitive Intelligence / Market Research firms
First real job: Pastry Chef; next Hotelier

What’s special ?
The Link is using economic development money to invest in university research…this makes it unique in the UK (ITIs contract out research)
Need to create measurable economic benefits from the research
We’re working with Stanford University, one of the most entrepreneurial universities in the world
Stanford is at the heart of Silicon Valley…because it helped create it
The Link’s also experimental…can this kind of investment really benefit business & help grow the economy?
It may provide some of the pieces… but we don’t expect to complete the jigsaw

Commercial Strategy
Invest only in projects with commercial viability
Not technology for technologies’ sake
Use industrial collaboration partners to offer guidance and direction
Otherwise how do we know what industry wants?
Utilise all Gov’t initiatives to help SMEs access IP (Score & Seekit etc)
No “build it and they will come mentality” – mechanisms needed
Use students and staff on consulting contracts with companies (primarily to adapt/implement University IP)
Specialists to help with demos/prototypes

Approach – what can we do for you?
Work with you to identify problems and future trends in your sector.
Place researchers into companies to offer insight and world-class expertise in the development of key technologies.
Identify new funding sources that companies can use to acquire novel IP and know-how.
Facilitate access to Silicon Valley and the US market.
We have some examples of applications we think might be useful…
But there are probably others we haven’t thought of..

Student projects: Little or no cost to suggest a topic for a 3 month student project – benefits both the student and the company. Collaboration: On existing research projects – companies can help direct existing research at no cost, and may wish to negotiate a licence when the research is completed. Consulting: When we already have something you want - we can help develop it and integrate into your company, with staff training if required. Contract research: If you want us to develop something just for you – we can negotiate terms and conditions covering things like intellectual property rights. We can also help identify and access new government and Scottish Enterprise initiatives that can be used help fund all of the above. Mechanisms for working together

Technologies and applications

Speech recognition
Turning spoken language into text
From, extremely accurate dictation by systems trained for one voice…
… to systems working in specific domains with many speakers
Speech synthesis
Turning text into speech
By breaking human language into parts, we can rebuild sounds to create ‘natural’ synthesised voices
Artificial voices now being used in a wide variety of applications
Spoken dialogue systems
Trying to create a ‘natural’ dialogue with a computer
Does the clever bit in the middle….
Enables ‘intelligent’ responses to unexpected
events
Technologies

Examples cont..
Information extraction
Teaching computers to automatically recognise entities in unstructured data
Can then identify relationships between entities and data sets
Eventually leads to intelligent retrieval
Text summarisation
Attempts to interpret the meaning of phrases and paragraphs
Ultimate aim is to take a document and accurately summarise the content
Already great results with legal documents
Question & answering systems
C ombines NLP with intelligent databases, where data is stored by meaning
Enables the building of natural question and answer (Q&A) systems that require little or no training to use
Translation
Advanced translation software can now assess context in the same way a human translator can, although considerably faster
Can also remember previous ‘model’ translations and implement immediately

Operations support
Researchers are already having dialogues with remote operated vehicles, which can be controlled using voice commands (as opposed to a keyboard, joystick etc)..
..as well as with completely autonomous robots with significant intelligence and reactive planning abilities, that only talk when they have specific problems.
For example the WITAS model helicopter below..
Applications

Applications cont…
Learning
Language technology can enhance our learning in a number of ways
By using intelligent search engines that actually ‘answer’ queries….
… to advanced tutoring systems already offering tailored advice and guidance…with the patience of a saint!
For example the BEETLE project
Often software agents can recognize users’ abilities and adapt to individual skill sets, for example the Storystation story-telling software.
Offers encouragement & advice, based on curriculum & past performance – tracks progress
Alpha version now being trialled in a small number of schools in Scotland.

Entertainment
Better and more interaction with virtual characters
Games companies are now using virtual characters that not only look real, but act realistically as well
Virtual characters can act in unpredictable ways, dramatically improving gaming interaction and player enjoyment
Some games companies, like Edinburgh-based Outerlight, have found that many players take part in their murder mystery game JUST to meet new characters

Virtual Agents
Several technologies can now be combined to produce a range of ‘virtual agents’
These agents (Avatars) will soon take the place of humans in some circumstances
An obvious application is the automated call centre, whereby a computer deals with customers on specific enquiries
Today, Avatars already used to present the news, and have even been used as virtual sales agents
Companies will be soon using avatars as 24 hour receptionists…for example, in the lobbies of large buildings
Applications cont…

Current Partners
Formal Industry Launch Event held on the 10 th October 2003
Company sizes: 3 - 3000 staff
Company sales: pre-sale - $900m revenues
Includes: developers of synthetic voices, operators of remotely operated & autonomous vehicles, database developers, business intelligence companies, knowledge management organisations and e-learning providers

Some current Partners

Link success to date…
Working with over 40 companies on collaborations, student projects, consulting etc
Signed over 10 licensing deals with Scottish companies
Recently attracted US company to establish R&D base in Edinburgh
Introduced Scottish companies to Silicon Valley contacts, e.g. AffectiveMedia to Toyota research centre.
Created hi-tech entrepreneurship courses, with over a dozen start-ups to date!

And finally…
Three Separately funded courses…that still count towards grades
Three courses to date – Informatics Entrepreneurship (2 courses of 10- weeks each) The Digital Marketplace (10 week course) – both four hours per week, plus four optional sessions
Guest Speakers from Silicon Valley, as well as entrepreneurs & VCs from Scotland
Also host Master Classes for directors of partner companies
Students teams present their business plans to a panel of active venture capitalists
Several Companies have already been incorporated
Online entrepreneurship courses for companies and researchers now being developed. Launching in October 2007
See: www.tech-entrepreneur.org

For further details, please visit: www.eslink.org and www.tech-entrepreneur.org

Contact
Michael Clouser
[email_address]
0131.650.4436

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BarCamp Scotland Edinburgh-Stanford Link Overview

by edinburghstanfordlink on Mar 05, 2007

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BarCamp Scotland Edinburgh-Stanford Link Overview — Presentation Transcript