Published: 9th May 2023
Three MINDS CDT researchers have taken their doctoral training in a new direction, launching Edlan, an AI consultancy start-up based out of the University of Southampton.
Alex Wang, Chris Subia-Waud and Caterina Sbandati founded Edlan to help businesses apply AI to practical problems. The company works with organisations to identify where AI and machine learning can improve efficiency and decision-making, developing solutions that are grounded in current research and tailored to each client's needs.
The three founders met through the MINDS CDT programme, where their training spanned the technical foundations of machine intelligence and the real-world contexts in which it is applied. That combination of research depth and applied awareness is at the heart of what Edlan offers: not off-the-shelf tools, but considered, evidence-based approaches to specific business challenges.
Edlan is one of a number of enterprise activities to emerge from the MINDS community. The CDT embeds commercialisation training and industry engagement into its doctoral programme, and the founders credit that exposure with helping them identify the gap Edlan is built to fill.
The launch is a strong example of what the MINDS programme was designed to make possible: researchers who are not just equipped to advance their field, but to take their knowledge into the world and put it to work.