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Gold award for human-competitive results

Posted on 25 July 2018

Professor Stephen Smith collected the 15th Annual Gold "Humies" Award, on behalf of colleagues at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) in Japan.

The Humies Awards recognise work that solves problems through evolutionary computation techniques but also that have produced demonstrably human-competitive solutions.

The team, comprising Professor Smith, Dr Becky Naylor and Dr Andy Turner from the Department of Electronic Engineering, Dr Stuart Jamieson, Dr Jane Alty, Dr Jeremy Cosgrove and Philippa Dugan-Carter from Leeds General Infirmary and Dr Michael Lones from Heriot-Watt University, will receive a cash prize of $5,000 for their work in applying machine learning to help people with Parkinson's dyskinesia - a debilitating side-effect of Parkinson's medication.

Their successful entry paper featured a wearable home monitoring system - Clear Sky's LID-Monitor - that has the potential to significantly reduce the clinical costs of managing Parkinson’s. A health economic assessment undertaken by YHEC Ltd. concluded that introduction of the technology will significantly improve the quality of life of people with Parkinson's dyskinesia and has the potential to save the NHS over £84m per year.

The LID-Monitor was developed by ClearSky Medical Diagnostics Ltd, a University spinout company for the Department of Electronics, established by co-founder and director Dr Stephen Smith and academics over the past 10 years as part of a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellowship awarded in 2012.