Sparrho

Last updated

Sparrho
Sparrho logo (2017).png
Created by Vivian Chan, Nilu Satharasinghe
URL www.sparrho.com
Written in Clojure [1]

Sparrho combines human and artificial intelligence to help research professionals and layman users stay up-to-date with new scientific publications and patents. [2] Sparrho's recommendation engine provides personalized scientific news-feeds by using proprietary machine learning algorithms to "aggregate, distill and recommend" relevant content. [3] The platform aims to complement traditional methods of finding relevant academic material such as Google Scholar, and PubMed with a system which enables the serendipitous discovery of content and across relevant scientific fields. [4]

Contents

Recommendation engine

Sparrho uses a "three-pronged approach" to content recommendation. Firstly, "data-data analysis" is tackled using techniques such as natural language processing to provide appropriate research based on data provided by users. [5] Secondly, "user-user interactions" are utilized to propose a wider range of potentially relevant subject areas to users with similar interests. [6] Finally, "user-data interactions" such as labeling articles as "relevant" or "irrelevant" within a particular scientific field allows Sparrho to personalize user newsfeeds. [7]

History

Sparrho was founded in 2013 by Vivian Chan and Nilu Satharasinghe as a solution to issues Chan encountered over the course of her biochemistry PhD at the University of Cambridge, especially in staying up to date with scientific literature [8] [9] [10] Initially established at Ideaspace in West Cambridge, and moving subsequently to Camden Collective [11] and the Ministry of Startups [12] in London, the company is now based in the data science hub SHACK15 in Shoreditch, London. [13]

In 2014, Chan was a semi-finalist for the 2014 Duke of York New Entrepreneur of the Year Award, [14] [15] and in 2015, Chan was included on the 35 Women Under 35 list compiled by Management Today. [16] In 2016, Sparrho was a semi-finalist in Pitch@Palace 5.0. [17]

As of July 2017, Sparrho has raised $3 million from investors including White Cloud Capital, AllBright, and Beast Ventures. [18]

Competitors

Sparrho's primary competitors are PubChase and Scizzle, [10] [19] though both PubChase and Scizzle are targeted towards biomedical sciences and solely recommend academic journal papers. [20] [21]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Sparrho's technology stack". StackShare.
  2. ↑ "About Sparrho". Sparrho.
  3. ↑ "Sparrho: the discovery platform with a bird's eye view on science". Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable.
  4. ↑ "INTERVIEW: Content Recommendation Platform Sparrho Talks Staying On Top Of Science". StrategyEye - Digital Media.
  5. ↑ "Peeking under the hood: Sparrho's Discovery Engine". Sparrho.
  6. ↑ Glenski, Maria; Weninger, Tim (31 July 2017). "Predicting User-Interactions on Reddit". Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining 2017. ASONAM '17. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 609–612. arXiv: 1707.00195 . doi:10.1145/3110025.3120993. ISBN   978-1-4503-4993-2. S2CID   649910.
  7. ↑ "Sparrho - How does our recommendation engine for science work?". Sparrho.
  8. ↑ Nicola Davis (December 2013). "Cambridge's leading tech startups". The Guardian.
  9. ↑ "Why EF". ef.
  10. 1 2 Gibney, Elizabeth (2014). "How to tame the flood of literature". Nature News & Comment. 513 (7516): 129–130. Bibcode:2014Natur.513..129G. doi:10.1038/513129a. PMID   25186906.
  11. ↑ "Sparrho finds a new nest!". Sparrho.
  12. ↑ "Tech Pitch: Sparrho". Startups.co.uk.
  13. ↑ "This Search Engine Uses AI to Keep Scientists Updated". SHACK15 News.
  14. ↑ "National Business Awards 2014 - Finalists". nationalbusinessawards.co.uk.
  15. ↑ "Vivian Chan of Sparrho one of ten semi-finalists competing for the Duke of York New Entrepreneur of the Year Award next week". Cambridge News.
  16. ↑ "I've never been regarded as weak' - 35 Women Under 35 2015". Management Today.
  17. ↑ "Sparrho will attend Pitch@Palace 5.0 hosted by HRH The Duke of York at St James Palace on 7th March 2016". Sparrho.
  18. ↑ "Sparrho raises $3 million to democratize access to science research". VentureBeat. 10 July 2017.
  19. ↑ "Diving into the haystack to make more hay?". plos.org.
  20. ↑ "PubChase - discover life sciences research of interest to you". PubChase.
  21. ↑ "Scizzle - Frequently Asked Questions". Scizzle.
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