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Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) have been placing graduates with innovative companies for over 40 years.  The University of Brighton has a strong track record in KTP, and we would like to see more University of Brighton graduates applying for our roles – this is a big reason why we are seeking your views.

With a chance to win a £30 Amazon voucher you will help inform our recruitment strategy at the University of Brighton.  We would like to hear your experiences of employment after graduation, what you value in a role, and how you have gone about finding a job after graduation. Your views will make a real difference to how we advertise our vacancies, where we advertise and how we describe our roles.

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Sue

Associate Profile

Name:  Maria Diapouli

Role: KTP Associate for Crimtan 2012-2014

Brief description of project

I was working with Crimtan, a global digital marketing company as part of my KTP project.  Crimtan’s clients include Marks and Spencer, Santander and Sky and provide services including:

• running advertising campaigns
• campaign optimisation towards customer KPI
• audience profiling and segmentation
• audience targeting/ retargeting and reporting

The project was supported by academics from the University of Brighton’s School of Computing Engineering Mathematics.  My project focussed on developing and implementing innovative data mining and modelling techniques to enhance customer profiling and optimise advert placement and effectiveness.

This included:

Phase 1: I reviewed and analysed the company’s business objectives, customer base, technology, delivery architecture and processes. Data mining and artificial intelligence techniques and methodologies were also analysed in accordance to company’s business objectives and systems architecture and business processes were documented.

Phase 2: I investigated data availability and developed processes for data collection, data cleaning, data validation and preparation. Open-source algorithms were identified, implemented and the best-performing ones were incorporated into business workflows.

Phase 3 I developed innovative approaches to enhancing placement rules by developing models for prediction for user click and conversion rate.  Additional techniques were developed for accelerated tuning models behaviour in order to refine models for achieving peak effectiveness on new campaigns. The impact of these innovations is measured through the development of business impact metrics.

Highlights from the project

I had the opportunity to take part in industry relevant conferences including Thirty-second SGAI International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the Seventeenth UK Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning, UK KDD BCS 2014 and was also able to participate in technical workshops. Which included Hadoop, Microsoft VBA, Microsoft SQL Server, all of which supported the successful delivery of the project.

A particular project success was the final outcomes of the model implementation. We can normally expect projects in data mining area to indicate that the accuracy of the learned patterns is between 40-60% however this KTP project delivered 90% accuracy of the data mining patterns, which a huge success for the company pushing them ahead of the competition in this area.

The best thing about being a KTP Associate

Through this KTP I have gained invaluable commercial experience, particularly in online advertising. I  had professional training in technical excellence/ state of the art (e.g. Hadoop, Hive, MS SQL, VBA), had business management/leadership exposure and had the chance to be mentored by lead academics and industry experts which I would not otherwise have been able to experience.

Challenges overcome during partnership

In the beginning, this KTP seemed to be challenging due to the nature of the company – the large volumes of data, and its specialisation in terms of low level complexity (e.g. raw cookies, xml data, csv files, etc.). However, both my company and academic supervisors helped me to overcome the challenges: The academic supervisors have provided their expertise in the Data Mining research area and the company supervisors have delivered descriptions regarding their data processing and optimisation systems. With the support of my supervisors the project has followed a successful path and has delivered insightful results to the company.

What I am doing now

My current job as a Research Officer in Data Mining Project Management at the University of Brighton has a similar feel to the KTP in terms of tasks, roles and responsibilities. In particular my everyday duties are related to:

• project management
• demonstration of analytics knowledge and implementation of heterogeneous databases and Big data
• competence in programming on data analysis tools
• research on various data mining algorithms and techniques

Definitely I would recommend a KTP since it is a very well structured program that offers huge support on the KTP Associate. The whole experience is invaluable.

Top tips for maintaining a successful and rewarding KTP partnership

From the Associate perspective:

• Be responsive to any changes to the project plan
• Always consider the final company’s objectives
• Consider your personal development as early as in the process as possible
• Enjoy the KTP Residential Course modules and keep in touch with other Associates

My Project

My KTP project was a primarily a marketing project for a long established charity that wanted to engage with new audiences. The Blond McIndoe Research Foundation is a burns research charity that was founded in the name of a pioneering burns Surgeon, Sir Archibald McIndoe.  The charity needed to replace its outdated website, create new marketing material and develop the marketing skills of its in-house fundraising team.

I had the opportunity to be involved with every part of creating and executing a marketing plan, producing briefs, recruiting and managing service providers and developing content and publicity materials. One of the highlights was organising a full days photoshoot in an active operating theatre where I had to get the  idea signed off with hospital management, find a photographer, match up availability and then on the day act as photographers mate and take calls for the burns surgeon whilst he was in the middle of operations.  I can’t imagine having this type of opportunity in any other graduate role.

After the KTP project finished I quickly started a new role as a marketing executive for an online retailer in the automotive sector.  This role had many similarities with the KTP project in terms of the very wide scope of activities I was required to undertake and the number of changes I implemented. As with the KTP project, this role also required me to be very self-sufficient and think creatively to achieve results with fairly small resources available.

A highlight of this role was myself acting as the photographer/camera man for a day filming on the Solent where the company was tuning an 80mph powerboat and involved me hanging on and filming in the engine bay whilst work was being carried out and up in the cockpit on the high speed runs.

After 2 years with them I left on their highest turnover month in their history and moved to a role of Sales and Marketing Manager at etyres who are a national online mobile tyre fitting company. I now sit on the Senior Management Team and developing the marketing strategy for the company and managing their marketing team. I feel that my experience on the KTP project prepared me well for my career and I had the opportunity to lead a project and to make decisions and changes that I might not have otherwise had.

The Challenges

The biggest challenges in the role were implementing changes in a small organisation with fairly minimal resources. Despite being brought in to implement change the charity was at times  a bit resistant  because some changes required substantial input from them in areas they had either never invested in or had previously tried but not seen effective results.  To overcome them I demonstrated how the changes would work whilst minimising risks and highlighting examples of other organisations where these changes had been very successful. I built up trust with my colleagues throughout the life of the KTP project which made it easier for big decisions and changes to be made.

 The Benefits

The KTP training budget was exceptionally useful to me in developing my online marketing knowledge which was fairly basic at the start of the project. The understanding that I developed from this heavily influenced the success of the Blond McIndoe website and since then has been something I have built on  which is still highly relevant in my career.  I found the support and advice from my academic supervisors invaluable.

In summary…

Throughout the KTP, there were some big challenges to work through and it was a great learning experience. Although at times it was a steep learning curve,  my career would not have progressed as quickly as it has without those 2 years as a KTP Associate. I would highly recommend the KTP scheme to any graduates looking to take the next step in their career.

I applied for the role of Eco-Retrofit Manager (KTP Associate) as part of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between The University of Brighton and the Guinness Partnership. It seemed to be the perfect opportunity to gain first hand experience in industry whilst maintaining support from an academic institution and gaining further qualifications. It did not disappoint! In the two year of my KTP I have attained a Master of Science degree, a Certificate in Management and passed a qualification to become a member of the Association of Project Managers to name just a few, all whilst being paid a full time wage.

It certainly wasn’t easy to fit in all of that work and additional qualifications, there were a lot of long days and nights juggling study and work; however I am sure that the opportunities that were presented to me during my two year KTP would not have been available in any other type of job. It feels like I have been given a head start to my career, having the experience and qualifications of somebody who has been working in industry for at least 5 years. My role within the Guinness Partnership was to run a two year pilot project to improve the energy efficiency of six of the organisation’s offices and develop a plan to rollout energy reduction across the remaining offices. Working closely with my company supervisor, Victoria Keen Head of Sustainability and Lead Academic Dr Jon Gates an expert in energy reduction we evaluated the current energy performance of the offices and selected six offices to improve that would provide the greatest learning. By retrofitting these six offices and implementing behaviour change initiatives we were able to make circa £50,000 annual savings and develop a strategy for the rollout of retrofit across the remaining office stock. I now feel as though I am an expert in my field, being invited to talk at national exhibitions and conferences to share my experience.

It is extremely satisfying to see a project such as this through to completion and to witness the benefits of your hard work. Upon completion of my KTP, I was offered a permanent role at The Guinness Partnership, however, regardless of whether the company partner is able to employ the Associate at the end of their contract, I believe that the experience and qualifications that a KTP Associate would hold would make them an extremely strong candidate for any job within their field.