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Automatic grammatical analysis enabling advanced text processing in commercial applications

Summary of the impact

Research carried out at Sussex into the automatic grammatical analysis of English text has enabled and enhanced a range of commercial text-processing applications and services. These include an automatic SMS question-answering service and a computer system that grades essays written by learners of English as a second language. Over the REF period there has been substantial economic impact on a spin-out company, whose viability has been established through revenue of around £500k from licensing, development and maintenance contracts for these applications.

Submitting Institution

University of Sussex

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
Psychology and Cognitive Sciences: Cognitive Sciences
Language, Communication and Culture: Linguistics

Sentic Computing

Summary of the impact

Extracting information and meaning from natural language text is central to a wide variety of computer applications, ranging from social media opinion mining to the processing of patient health-care records. Sentic Computing, pioneered at the University of Stirling, underpins a unique set of related tools for incorporating emotion and sentiment analysis in natural language processing. These tools are being employed in commercial products, with performance improvements of up to 20% being reported in accuracy of textual analysis, matching or even exceeding human performance (Zoral Labs). Current applications include social media monitoring as part of a web content management system (Sitekit Solutions Ltd), personal photo management systems (HP Labs India) and patient opinion mining (Patient Opinion Ltd). Impact has also been achieved through direct collaboration with other commercial partners such as Microsoft Research Asia, TrustPilot and Abies Ltd. Moreover, international organisations such as the Brain Sciences Foundation and the A*Star Institute for High Performance Computing have realised major impact by drawing upon our research.

Submitting Institution

University of Stirling

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, Information Systems

The Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK)

Summary of the impact

The Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) is a widely-adopted Python library for natural language processing. NLTK is run as an open source project. Three project leaders, Steven Bird (Melbourne University), Edward Loper (BBN, Boston) and Ewan Klein (University of Edinburgh) provide the strategic direction of the NLTK project.

NLTK has been widely used in academia, commercial / non-profit organisations and public bodies, including Stanford University and the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which administers widely-recognised tests across more than 180 countries. NLTK has played an important role in making core natural language processing techniques easy to grasp, easy to integrate with other software tools, and easy to deploy.

Submitting Institution

University of Edinburgh

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
Psychology and Cognitive Sciences: Cognitive Sciences
Language, Communication and Culture: Linguistics

From Formal Methods to Software Migration

Summary of the impact

The spin-out company CSM Ltd. was set up in 1991 to commercially develop Durham research on program transformation. Up until 1999, this company (which in the mid-90's became Durham Software Engineering Ltd. and subsequently Software Migrations Ltd.) and researchers at Durham University developed the FermaT Workbench: an industrial-strength assembler re-engineering workbench for program comprehension, migration and re-engineering. In 1999, Software Migrations Ltd. relocated to St. Albans and now has an extensive list of national and international clients. All its products (software and services) are built on the FermaT Workbench and has generated considerable revenue with this revenue strongly expected to rise steeply in the near future.

Submitting Institution

University of Durham

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Computer Software, Information Systems

Research on natural language processing leading to improved language tests and dictionaries for millions of language learners

Summary of the impact

Worldwide impact on language learners and others has been generated by the development at Lancaster of a ground-breaking natural language processing tool (CLAWS4), and an associated unique collection of natural language data (the British National Corpus, or BNC). Some highlights selected from the primary impacts are as follows:

  • Cambridge University Press has significantly improved the quality of its language learning materials (over 60 books) via key enhancements to its core source material that have been enabled by CLAWS4 and the BNC;
  • The Society for Testing English Proficiency (STEP) in Japan has based a widely-used Language Test (EIKEN) on data analysed by CLAWS4. The EIKEN test is taken by two million schoolchildren every year.

The pathways to impact have been primarily via consultancy and via licencing of software IP. The impact itself is largely on the language learners—i.e. users of products such as the above. There is a secondary economic impact on a UK SME which has licenced our software.

Submitting Institution

Lancaster University

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
Psychology and Cognitive Sciences: Cognitive Sciences
Language, Communication and Culture: Linguistics

Type-2 Fuzzy Logic: Managing uncertainty and imprecision in telecoms and finance

Summary of the impact

Professor Hani Hagras' research into type-2 Fuzzy Logic Controllers (FLCs) underpins novel control systems which avoid the drawbacks and shortcomings of the type-1 FLCs used in numerous real world applications. Type-2 FLCs, developed at Essex, enable challenging applications to be realised and managed with better accuracy and robustness. Such applications include:

  • Telecommunications:
    • British Telecom employ type-2 FLCs for capacity planning, improving the efficiency of their workforce deployment
  • Finance:
    • LogicalGlue Ltd applied type-2 FLCs to develop a group decision-making system which outperforms existing commercial counterparts
    • Discovery Investing Scoreboard Inc. use type-2 FLCs to identify early stage investment opportunities

Submitting Institution

University of Essex

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Mathematical Sciences: Applied Mathematics
Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Information Systems

UOA11-03: Securing Data with Database Firewall

Summary of the impact

Pioneering research into Inductive Logic Programming in the UOA led to the creation of Secerno Ltd. From 2008 Secerno attracted investment of approximately $20m and successfully released several updated versions of its product DataWall, based on this Oxford research. In May 2010 Oracle Corporation bought Secerno specifically to gain access to this technology, which now forms a core part of Oracle's database protection and compliance products. Oracle continues to develop the software, which is used across the globe by public entities and private companies to protect databases from internal and external attack and to ensure that they comply with relevant legislation. Customers include major businesses such as T-Mobile, which uses Database Firewall to protect 35 million users.

Submitting Institution

University of Oxford

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, Computation Theory and Mathematics
Psychology and Cognitive Sciences: Cognitive Sciences

Case 4 - Reconfigurable Computing for High Performance Applications

Summary of the impact

In the last 20 years, reconfigurable technology has transformed High-Performance Computing and Embedded Systems Design. Research of the Custom Computing and Reconfigurable Systems teams at Imperial made pivotal contributions to this transformation, targeting particularly Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. Since 2008, the impact of this research has been to

I1) underpin design flow for partial run-time reconfigurable designs for Xilinx FPGA devices;

I2) contribute to the start-up company Maxeler, pioneering reconfigurable computing systems and cloud services for high-performance computing in the financial and other sectors;

I3) enable near real-time risk analysis for JP Morgan's global portfolio to analyse and manage risk much faster than previously possible;

I4) achieve about 250 times speedup for Chevron's seismic modelling for oil and gas exploration, compared to the alternative use of CPU-based machines;

I5) accelerate a financial market integrity platform for BlueBee and HL Steam in hardware.

Submitting Institution

Imperial College London

Unit of Assessment

Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Metallurgy and Materials

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Computer Software
Technology: Computer Hardware

Case Study 2: Reconfigurable Computing for High Performance Applications (Reconfigurable Computing)

Summary of the impact

In the last 20 years, reconfigurable technology has transformed High-Performance Computing and Embedded Systems Design. Research of the Custom Computing and Reconfigurable Systems groups at Imperial made pivotal contributions to this transformation, targeting particularly Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. Since 2008, the impact of this research has been to

  1. underpin design flow for partial run-time reconfigurable designs for Xilinx FPGA devices;
  2. contribute to the start-up company Maxeler, pioneering reconfigurable computing systems and cloud services for high-performance computing in the financial and other sectors;
  3. enable near real-time risk analysis for JP Morgan's global portfolio to analyse and manage risk much faster than previously possible;
  4. achieve about 250 times speedup for Chevron's seismic modelling for oil and gas exploration, compared to the alternative use of CPU-based machines;
  5. accelerate a financial market integrity platform for BlueBee and HL Steam in hardware.

Submitting Institution

Imperial College London

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Computer Software
Technology: Computer Hardware

Language Unlocked

Summary of the impact

University of Huddersfield research into corpus stylistics has led to the development of Language Unlocked, a consultancy service that uses linguistic methodologies and interpretative procedures to help public, private, third-sector and non-governmental organisations. Language Unlocked has informed clients' strategic decision-making, communicated their organisational strategies and assisted them in realising long-term goals. Beneficiaries have included Britain's unions, which have reassessed their communications policies; the Green Party, which has revised its policies, manifestos and communications; and a major chemical company, which increased its visibility as a result of carefully worded advertising.

Submitting Institution

University of Huddersfield

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
Psychology and Cognitive Sciences: Cognitive Sciences
Language, Communication and Culture: Linguistics

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