Last week, the Bayes Centre hosted industry and public sector organisations alongside academics from the University of Edinburgh for its Academic Industry Meeting Day (AIMday) on the theme of data, digital and AI. AIMday provides academic researchers and organisations with the opportunity to come together, share ideas and begin to think about solutions to the predefined challenges posed by the attending organisations. These questions are motivated by a business need or challenge which require a new innovative approach. The questions are matched with academics from a range of different disciplines for a structured one-hour workshop based on AIMday’s simple concept that providing different perspectives results in surprising new avenues to solve problems. Dr Vaishak Belle, Director of Research and Innovation at the Bayes Centre delivered the welcome address to the 121 attendees from across academia, industry and the public sector. One of the key things the AIMday is trying to emphasise is how data science and AI could be instrumental in shaping and benefitting society.The industry partners, at the frontier of what they do, bring relevant and scientifically interesting questions that are bothering them. On the other side, the academics sit with these questions and these partners, and they think through what they know and how they can apply that knowledge The 20 data and AI-driven challenges originated from a diverse array of organisations including Amazon, HSBC, and Historic Environment Scotland. Central themes encompassed AI governance, trust and safety, as well as data privacy, sovereignty, and secure sharing. The challenges also span a wide range of applications: from advancing fish-counting systems in hydro-electric settings and detecting unmonitored AI agents in corporate networks, to analysing financial reports and earnings calls from publicly traded companies. Bayes Centre resident, Tony Hickman, AI Forward Deployed Engineer at IBM Technology UK said: The AIMday event was a fantastic experience for me. The chance to discuss my area of interest with a wide range of academics with a variety of backgrounds and skills was enlightening. All in all, an opportunity I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend to anyone - just hope I can come up with another challenging question for any future event. Tom Wilkinson, Chief Data Officer at The Scottish Government who has attended several AIMdays reflected: I have experience of using AIMday before, and it was invaluable in getting independent expert input into decisions for government. Crucially, the last time we had valuable input that then translated into a commercial challenge that we launched, which helped support a UK company. So, you know, there were real world financial implications, both in terms of the public spending, and in terms of small businesses. This one day event is organised by Edinburgh Innovations, the University of Edinburgh’s commercialisation service with support from the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account to fund potential seed projects arising from the day. Sohan Seth, Lead Data Scientist at the Data Science Unit, School of Informatics has participated in multiple AIMdays and said: I lead a small team of data scientists at the School of Informatics as part of the Data Science unit. We have taken part in previous AIMdays and went on to develop projects that have been quite diverse;from a circular economy challenge, to mitigating child poverty and fault detection in electronic devices. What binds them together is the data and AI side of things, which we specialise in. AIMday offers lots of opportunity for academics not just in applying for [seed] funding, but in building relationships both externally and with other attending academics within the university. AIMday® is a registered trademark of Uppsala University. Learn more about AIMday This article was published on Tuesday 22 September 2026
