GCHQ launches Manchester accelerator programme to wait on companies leverage tech for citizen wellbeing

Innovation Co-Lab will mentor companies to grow, prevent crime and give a ranking to on-line security

Laura Middag Alvarez

Laura Middag Alvarez

Printed: 29 Jun 2020 11: 12

Intelligence agency GCHQ has launched the Innovation Co-Lab, a mentorship scheme to wait on 10 to 15 innovative minute to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) kick-begin their growth and give a ranking to their use of files science, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine discovering out.

The project is being conducted on-line by a series of masterclasses in collaboration with international tech accelerator UP Ventures, which works to join brands, startups, traders and governments to approach business success and stakeholder payment.

The Innovation Co-Lab relies at The Touchdown, an entrepreneurial skills hub at MediaCityUK in Manchester. The call for entries opened on 24 June and the final cohort of companies shall be announced on 17 August, with the programme atmosphere out on 31 August.

GCHQ goals to reach innovative startups based in the north-west, offering skills on cyber intelligence and security to give a ranking to the protection of company platforms, such as reducing the possibility of fraud and maintaining childhood on-line.

“We’re going in point of fact expansive with this,” talked just a few GCHQ spokesperson. “We specifically haven’t position the form of companies that we’re after. We correct have to run looking out to receive what’s obtainable in the UK.”

Areas that GCHQ is attracted to changing into spirited with consist of health, training, the emergency services and tackling organised crime.

UP Ventures will provide an “investor community” and “instructing service” to motivate the startups’ growth. Companies will derive wait on with commercialisation, files integrity and scaling, to boot as “making the most of prominent ticket association”, talked about GCHQ.

Emer Coleman, project director at UP Ventures, talked about: “We can all be collaborating collectively, bringing skills from the commercial world and additionally from the skills plot itself, from finance, taking a examine business fashions, business growth, marketing, yarn approach. GCHQ shall be taking a examine that specifically from a skills standpoint.”

Coleman talked just a few key feature of the programme shall be to wait on companies in files science, machine discovering out and AI do away with in right time with suppliers in the final public and inner most sectors. “We’re the use of files science to invent a obvious impact,” she added.

The programme is looking out to receive companies that beget a minimal viable product prepared to test or pilot, though Coleman talked about single founders had been prefer on in the previous.

GCHQ described the project as an “all-round, quickly-track, accelerated business proposition” that permits it to give wait on to the UK tax economy “by taking technologists who specialise in intelligence, and constructing of us’s products the use of that unbelievable files”.

The Co-Lab has been moved on-line thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, and so UP Ventures shall be relying on collaborative tool instruments. Coleman hopes that services shall be developed that “wait on with the original fashioned of Covid-19”.

She added: “The general public sector needs innovation more than ever now, on yarn of they beget such small resources and such pressures.

“GCHQ in point of fact wanted to answer to the ‘now’ of Covid. We wanted to manufacture one thing that shall be more agile. Extreme sectors such as health, training, emergency services and communications depend heavily on files integrity, on which, increasingly more, significant machine discovering out relies. It would possibly perchance perchance perchance perchance handiest grow to be more significant in the future as citizens and companies across the globe alter to dwelling with Covid-19.”

Gav Smith, director general for skills at GCHQ, talked about: “There would possibly perchance be a rising possibility that files will also be manipulated to commit crimes and prefer advantage of the most vulnerable people of our society.”

He talked about GCHQ’s mentorship will wait on these companies to give a ranking to the protection of their on-line platforms at this foremost time.

No longer like many different accelerators, UP Ventures does no longer invent its dispute material, or who shall be in payment for handing over masterclasses, till the final cohort of startups has been organized.

“We produce very mighty into the needs and requirements of the companies that are chosen,” talked about Coleman. “It’s no longer pre-certain dispute material that they then fetch – we prefer the cohort after which we quickly place collectively what’s the handiest invent high-tail that’s going to head well with their requirements.”

Per GCHQ, the Innovation Co-Lab is a rebranded and rebatched model of the Manchester Accelerator, which had been working for some years at a smaller scale. The first distinction this yr is a brand original point of interest on the more specific technologies of AI, files science and machine discovering out.

The 2019 Protected Citizen accelerator turned into the first such project to be developed jointly between GCHQ and UP Ventures to motivate the growth of startups the use of innovative technologies. Eleven candidates were shortlisted out of 60 applicants, all of that were Manchester-based.

One company that benefited from last yr’s scheme turned into Tended, which developed a wristwatch that helps workers retain a two-metre distance from every assorted. Protect Digital, a tool company that worked to establish illegal on-line pharmacies, additionally took piece, along side a company constructing an augmented reality app for suicide prevention.

This yr, purposes are birth UK-huge. GCHQ and UP Ventures are fervent to motivate companies that beget an ardour in the north of the country, perchance extending their operations there. “However we won’t exclude someone on that foundation,” talked about Coleman.

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