Guildhawk and Sheffield Hallam recognised among Top 50 KTPs in UK history

9th July 2025

Sheffield Hallam University and Guildhawk’s two Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPS) have been selected as part of Innovate UK’s “50 Success Stories” celebrating 50 years of the KTP programme.

This national recognition by Innovate UK honours the most impactful collaborations between UK businesses and academia.

The first Guildhawk-Sheffield Hallam KTP led to the creation of GAI Translate, Guildhawk’s proprietary AI-powered multilingual translation platform.

Professor Chris Roast, associate professor in human-computer interaction, and academic lead on the first KTP, said: “GAI Translate is a great example of how academic insight can drive commercial innovation with global impact.”

The second KTP is currently developing a new method for data labelling, addressing one of the biggest challenges in AI today: creating high-quality datasets to train machine learning models.

Professor Alex Shenfield, professor of machine learning who is leading the second KTP, said: “High-quality data is the foundation of trustworthy AI. Our work is helping to solve a critical bottleneck in the development of intelligent systems.”

Funded jointly by the individual business or organisation and the government’s Innovate UK, KTPs involve a transfer of knowledge, technology and skills. They give companies access to the expertise and technical insight they need to innovate and offer universities the chance to apply their research to real world problems.

Jurga Žilinskiene MBE, CEO of Guildhawk, said: “We’re thrilled to be recognised for our commitment to ethical innovation. These KTPs have helped us turn bold ideas into real-world technologies that are transforming global communication.”

Sheffield Hallam University first worked on a KTP in 1985, and has since partnered with more than 150 companies on 210 projects.

Being showcased for the 50th anniversary highlights the industry-leading outcomes of the Guildhawk-Sheffield Hallam collaboration and sets a benchmark for future industry-academic innovation.