Mark Hughes completed a PhD in computer vision and ML at Insight, in the area of large scale visual search technologies. He finished in 2010 and went on to work as a Postdoc researcher on several academic and industry collaboration projects before moving into industry.

‘Since leaving academia, I have worked in various roles across the technology industry from early stage companies to multinational technology companies. As my first foray into the commercial domain, I founded a visual search company while still at Insight which started off as an academic project. The leadership team at Insight strongly encourages this activity and it’s a great opportunity for budding entrepreneurs with technical expertise to get a start. Together with a group of fellow Insight researchers, we spun this company out from the university and raised private funding to get it off the ground.

‘In more recent years I was formerly a research scientist at IBM Watson, working on machine learning problems in the clinical domain. I also held roles as Director of AI at United Healthcare and led AI projects at the US Department of Defense. In recent years I helped found a visual AI company based in the US and currently head up the AI team there.

‘The people and expertise available at insight provide an invaluable resource that gives a strong technical grounding to any aspiring researcher. The collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of Insight fosters a culture of knowledge sharing. You have the opportunity to work closely with fellow PhD candidates and researchers, engaging in discussion and benefiting from diverse perspectives. Furthermore through industry collaborations, I gained exposure to real-world applications and industry best practices and this exposure provided the confidence and experience to jump into industry roles.’