We welcomed two new team members!

Upon a successful application for the Accelerated Knowledge Transfer to Innovate (AKT2I) Pilot Scheme we were awarded funding with Bangor University.

This has allowed us to borrow two very talented Phd students from Bangor University to create a robust speech model that translates text to allow for Welsh to English and English to Welsh interpretation on the platform.

Leena, one of the students, has a very interesting background in Computer Science. Having previously studied a BSc and MSc degrees at Aberystwyth, she moved to Bangor to complete her PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Computing with the Language Technologies in Bangor University. In which, Leena is focussing on text processing for minority languages (and is working alongside us!!).

Tom Burke, one of our co-founders and CEO shared how happy we all are to have both students on board. He said, “This AKT project allows us to strengthen not only your language tool capabilities, it strengthens our links with Bangor university’s Language Technology Unit and increases chances of cooperation and opportunities with the excellent students from the university.” He praises both Preben and Leena’s enthusiasm by adding “they’ve dived straight in and gone beyond the level of enthusiasm and willingness we were hoping for.”

Professor Delyth Prys, Head of the Language Technologies Unit at Bangor University said “These AKT grants are very competitive and we’re delighted to have won one to work with Haia Communications Ltd once again. The way Haia have been able to build on our Welsh language resources and take them further in their innovative commercial products is very exciting, and proves the importance of the partnerships we are developing with local companies.”

And our CTO, Andy, added “Having Leena Farhat and Preben Vangberg working closely with the Haia team provides an invaluable academic insight into machine learning technologies that are at the core of Haia’s live transcription functionality. It’s a really key partnership that helps improve our transcription accuracy whilst providing important commercial expertise back to the University to help improve their courses, materials and relationships with local businesses.”

We’re sure looking forward to seeing what great things Leena and Preben get up to with the team!