The first half of 2020 has brought about unprecedented challenges to businesses across the sector. While Sprout.ai has been no exception, we are pleased to say we have continued to grow and even to expand our team. In fact, four new members have joined us in critical roles over recent weeks. Let’s meet them.
Niclas Stoltenberg – Head of Engineering
Niclas is already a familiar face at Sprout.ai, having worked with us on a contractor basis since last year. In May, he joined us officially as Head of Engineering. Niclas explained his decision to forsake the contractor lifestyle:
I decided to join the Sprout.ai team full time as I strongly believe that our team culture and drive will enable us to grow exponentially. I have worked with many companies offering deep learning services in a consultancy capacity and only one was close to having the same energy Sprout.ai has. That company went from 0-100 in Silicon Valley. I see the same, if not more, for Sprout.ai!
Niclas has a passion for competitive machine learning, mainly via the Kaggle network. This is a platform on which companies can present their problems/pain points to a group of highly skilled data scientists for them to solve.
At Sprout.ai, Niclas finds it interesting to map the insurance landscape using graph theory and deep learning. Our proprietary automatic policy check tool gives us the power to map exactly where in an insurance policy the customer’s claim is included in their coverage, and Niclas is excited at the prospect of further harnessing this technology in the future.
Steffen Issleib – Lead Data Scientist
Steffen joined us in April, and but says it seems much longer as he already feels like an established part of the family. He has a background in quantitative trading and modelling and holds a PhD in probability theory and reinforcement learning. Prior to joining Sprout.ai. Steffen developed machine learning and AI solutions for FTSE 100 corporations in the engineering and finance sectors.
Steffen relishes the challenge of identifying particular use cases that are naturally suited for AI and then tailoring state of the art machine learning models to improve or even transform a business.
What I loved about Sprout.ai that was obvious from the first interview is the unparalleled energy and drive that everyone at sprout brings on board. In large corporations the best ideas and concepts often wither in different layers of responsibilities and administrative structures. At Sprout.ai we can go from a proprietary research idea to a deployed implementation at rapid speed. The commitment and support from the whole team is the perfect environment to implement game changing new ideas.
Steffen says that he has been looking for this kind of working environment where he can share his ideas and see them come to fruition for a long time. He has also been searching for well-suited business applications for AI and in Sprout.ai he has found what he was looking for.
Fahad Syed – Data Scientist
Fahad graduated from UCL with a Masters in machine learning and has previously worked in the market research space one the UK’s top insurers. He finds the automation of previously time-consuming tasks in the analysis of insurance data both fascinating and rewarding.
Having seen first-hand how data science is being applied internally I am very excited to have now joined Sprout.ai and to be working on one of the biggest challenges in the insurance space. There a huge opportunity for us to not only improve efficiencies but also reduce uncertainty from processes with our state-of-the-art deep learning. We can have a positive impact on people at a particularly vulnerable moment in their life.
Fahad commented that the complexity of automating a claim presents a variety of problems to be solved, including reading text from an image and having a computer understand the nuances of the policy and the claim itself. He feels that the coming months will be extremely exciting and is looking forward to continuing the ongoing work on developing our natural language process (NLP) capabilities and our deep learning model for images and fraud detection.
Lizzie Chisholm – Operations Executive
Lizzie joined us in March, having graduated last year with an International Business degree from Loughborough University. In the months after graduation, she completed multiple stints in the technology space, both in the UK and in Shanghai. These inspired her to find a role that in which she could explore her interests in this field further.
I was looking specifically for a role within a start-up, desiring a high paced, exciting place to work. So far, Sprout.ai has proven to be exactly that. I am very excited about the coming months, as there is a fantastic opportunity for personal growth. At work I have been given the opportunity to grow at the same pace as Sprout.ai (which is super quick!).
In the three months since Lizzie joined, the team has almost doubled in size, and her role has already expanded into new areas. She is starting to develop into the project management area of the business by supporting client-facing projects and says she is super-excited about what is to come.
Exciting times ahead Niels Thone, CEO of Sprout.ai said:
It is really humbling to have these whip-smart and super driven people choosing to join our company. They really believe in our vision and work super hard to achieve the goals we set together. They will make up the next phase of growth and help define our path forward.
The advice for a CEO is always to hire people that are smarter than you – well I think we’re most definitely succeeding there!
Please join us in welcoming Niclas, Steffen, Fahad and Lizzie aboard. We wish them every success as they play their part in the exciting journey of growth and discovery that everyone at Sprout.ai is a part of.