Miguel lands first Entrepreneur in Residence role at Essex

Data science expert Dr Miguel Martinez has been awarded the first Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence (EiR) at the University of Essex.

The scheme aims to increase the knowledge and awareness in UK universities of cutting-edge industrial science, research and innovation by placing individuals with relevant experience into academic settings.

Dr Martinez already has an established decade-long relationship with Essex, having been an industrial advisor to the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering and, previously, an associate on an Essex-led Knowledge Transfer Programme (KTP) project which culminated with the creation of Signal AI (of which Dr Martinez is a co-founder).

Signal AI, the external intelligence company, helps businesses make sense of the outside world. Using the Signal AI External Intelligence platform for decision augmentation, organisations can spot critical signals in the external noise, allowing them to get ahead of risk and opportunity, and make confident decisions.

Powered by Signal AI’s External Intelligence Graph, the platform crunches huge amounts of information from the world’s content, and provides timely insight on trends, patterns and unknown unknowns to augment critical business decisions. Signal AI serves over 40% of the Fortune 500 including Deloitte, Bank of America and Google, and is building an innovative, inclusive and enduring company to transform the way businesses make decisions.

Whilst leading the Signal AI research team, Dr Martinez also ran collaboration programmes with top international universities to transform machine learning, natural language processing and information retrieval into large-scale and pioneering commercial technology products.

Key aspects of the EiR scheme include exposing university staff and students to state-of-the-art industrial research and development, including the scientific challenges faced by industry, and providing support and expert advice aimed at promoting innovation and the translation of research by universities.

Dr Martinez has always been passionate about bridging the gap between academia and business. During his EiR role, he aims to support staff and students at Essex on their entrepreneurship journey.

“The Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence (EiR) scheme is a fantastic initiative to promote the knowledge sharing between industry and academia and I am honoured to have been awarded this position within the University of Essex,” explained Dr Martinez. ”I am truly excited about the opportunity and the potential impact I could have within the university ecosystem.

“Having spent much of my career at the intersection of academia and industry, I now want to share my learnings with students and academics on how to think commercially about academic research and how to translate technical expertise into commercial and societal impact.”

University of Essex Head of Business Engagement Robert Walker added: “I have had the pleasure of working with Miguel in partnership for a number of years and I am delighted we have been able to win the prestigious Royal Society award to enable our relationship to grow further. At Essex, we are passionate about supporting businesses at all stages of their scale up journey and Miguel’s experiences with the pioneering Signal AI and beyond will be invaluable to student start-ups, academic colleagues with commercial ambitions and our current AI collaborative projects.”

In addition to his work in Signal AI, Dr Martinez advises several organisations such as the Global Disinformation Index and Full Fact, as well as being an active angel investor and start-up advisor for several start-ups. Dr Martinez has been awarded the Business Leader of Tomorrow award 2014 by Innovate UK and was included in the list of UK Business Innovators in 2016 by Bloomberg.