Research Area

My research income since 2006 tops €13 million, of which around 20% directly from industry (e.g., Rolls-Royce plc, JustGiving, Football Whispers, etc.). I have co-created three spin-out companies : Aeqora Ltd (specializing in human mobility tracking), K-Now Ltd (specializing in knowledge management via social media) and The Floow (a company providing car telematics solutions for insurance to hundreds of thousands of users on four continents). The Floow had an exit of $60 million in 2022.

I was the founder and academic director of the University Technology Centre on Artificial Intelligence for Defence and Security funded by Defence Science and Technology Lab (UK Ministry of Defence) and CounterTerrorism UK.

Application areas and success stories:

• Sensing via mobile phones, wearables and low cost architectures. I have developed:
  • Tracking via Mobile Phones: I have created a human mobility tracking technology with around 900,000 downloads in the UK, used for supporting governmental campaigns for health and wellbeing, as well as to understand mobility in large metropolitan areas. For example this wass used for three years in Active 10 on behalf of Public Health England. This was an app and a large scale server infrastructure designed to collect sub-minute tracking data from over 900,000 users. The same tracking technology was used by the Birmingham City Council to track thousands of free bikes with the Seta App. It was also used by MoveMore a project that aims to make Sheffield the city in the Uk that "moves more" by 2020.
    • The Aeqora App, an app released in technical validation to four hospitals in Germany, UK and Israel as part of the Mobilise-D EU project
  • Tracking heart conditions and the correlation with mobility in patients using wearables and mobile phones. We have worked with cardiologists across Europe. See our Lancet Digital paper.
  • Tracking of items in hospitals. We had a project funded by Rotherham General Hospital
  Impact of this activity has been considerable: we have spun out two companies:
  • The Floow providing telematic services to some of the major international insurers. The Floow had an exit for $69m in 2022.
  • Aeqora, providing services for tracking humans and items in smart cities, with a particular focus on heath and wellbeing
  Relevant projects:
  • Seta a 5.5 million EU project I coordinated.
  • The automated traveller, a £360k project funded by the UK Ministry of Defence

• Situation Awareness via social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and the Web. We develop methods for large-scale information capture of structured and unstructured data. Particular focus on use for emergency response during natural catastrophes and social unrest.

  • We have developed the TRIDS framework for situation awareness in events using social media. It was used by emergency control rooms in UK and Europe to monitor and manage large events involving over a million people over two years, inlcuding some fo the largest music festivals in the world and the evacuation of 30,000 people from the city of Vicenza (Italy) to support the defuse of a world war II bomb.
  • We have supported Football Whispers in the analysis of around 70 million social media messages a month since 2015.
  • We have supported JustGiving, the largest donation company in teh world in creating a recommender system to support donors' analysis. The system provided a 320% increase in customer returns.
  Relevant projects:

  I was the director of one of the 5 flagship projects in Europe on citizen observatories, WeSenseIt, a 5.3 million EU project.
  Other projects: Lodie (EPSRC), Randms, (ESPRC/MoD), Trids (TSB/SBRI), WeKnowIt, EA horizon scanning (Environment Agency)

• Behaviour Analysis in real life and in the digital world: we have been working on user modelling and Profiling of Web and real world users. Areas of application:
  • I was the director of the The University Technology Centre in Defence and Security funded by both the UK Ministry of Defence and CounterTerrorism UK.
  • Monitoring driver behaviour: creation of a spin-out company (The Floow Ltd) developing and commercializing a product for driver behaviour tracking using mobile phones. The Floow had an exit of $69m in 2022.
• Large Scale Knowledge Management in Large Organisations: we develop methodologies to support organisation in organising and reusing their knowledge and data. Main highlights:
• Overall coordination of the X-Media EU Project on large-scale knowledge management across media, €13.8m, 15 partners, £1m of follow-on investment by industrial partners, 3 spin-out companies created.
• Creation of models for large scale indexing and searching of distributed company archives.
• Created a terminology recognition a system for aerospace certified for Aerospace use, which became core to a knowledge management programme at Rolls-Royce PLC, was shortlisted for the Rolls-Royce reativity Award and saved the company £14 million a year.
• Creation of a spin-out company (K-Now Ltd), 10 employees, over 200k/year income commercializing our search and indexing technology.
Relevant projects: Siloet, Samulet, Smartproducts, X-Media, Dot.Kom, Ipas