With Innovate UK and The University of Manchester
KultraLab®, the behavioural science and technology organisation behind the B2B non-human coaching-at-scale app Kultra®, is delighted to have secured funding with The University of Manchester as part of an Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP). KTPs aim to help businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills within the UK knowledge base. This KTP project has been co-funded by UKRI through Innovate UK and follows on from a 9-month EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account Proof-of-Concept project managed and delivered by the University.
The recent award will enable KultraLab® to take on an experienced PhD level Associate from the University for a period of three years. The successful candidate will develop and embed advanced artificial intelligence (AI) capability for the development of a scalable, AI-based digital coaching platform to enable workforces to fulfil their performance potential using the power of coaching.
Since incorporation in 2019, KultraLab® has invested in a core team to engineer its first digital coaching platform, launched in 2022 to early adopter organisations across Green Energy, Professional Services, Construction and retail and consumer sectors.
The collaboration with The University of Manchester offers an exciting opportunity to embed advanced knowledge of AI, machine learning and human-computer interaction to significantly accelerate KultraLab®’s platform, enhance differentiation within the market, step change user-experience and cumulative performance impact for both users and their organisations. The knowledge gained from this KTP will be embedded through established KultraLab® practices, including working directly with the Engineering team and Professor Xiaojun Zeng, Professor of Machine Learning, Department of Computer Science, The University of Manchester.
The Associate will sit within the organisation’s growing Manchester hub.
Commenting on the recent funding, Steve Baggi, Founder & CEO, KultraLab® said, “The Knowledge Transfer Partnership further strengthens our relationship with The University of Manchester. We are excited at moving a step closer to embedding AI techniques for analysing and modelling the relationship between behaviour attributes and workforce KPIs within our platform as well as building a recommender system for behaviour enhancements and performance improvements.
“KultraLab®’s AI solution will be unique to the market, transforming the digital coaching experience to one which is more intelligent, capable of learning and adapting, giving users a truly personalised coaching experience. These advancements will also provide clients with greater data and insights around productivity, motivations and learning to build more engaged workforces.”
Susan Suttle, Knowledge Transfer Adviser, IUK KTN said, “This KTP Award comes at an exciting time for KultraLab as they embrace the next level of technical innovation within their already unique digital coaching platform. KTP supports organisations with the capacity to innovate and grow with the opportunity to partner with leading research institutes for mutual benefit; for KultraLab this affords the timely opportunity to work with a world leading academic team at the cutting-edge of their research disciplines. I am very much looking forward to supporting this collaboration as they achieve their goals.”
Professor Xiao-Jun Zeng added, “We are very excited and looking forward to working with KultraLab on this KTP project. This is a great opportunity for the academic team to enter a new AI research area of human behavioural modelling and management to improve the employee’s productivity and performance. It will also enable us to transfer our expertise and research outcome to solve real application problems and deliver the commercial benefits and impact.”