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Techspert machine learning engineer, Ayaka Shinozaki, wins at the 2019 Future Stars of Tech Awards

The Future Stars of Tech Awards celebrate women working in technology and champion those who are at the early stages of their career. This year’s awards ceremony was held at The Brewery in London and awards were presented to entrants across 14 categories, with machine learning engineer Ayaka Shinozaki from Techspert winning the Automation Future Star award.


Ayaka (middle) with her Future Star Award pictured with Dr Kathryn O'Donnell (left) and Julia Hardy (right). Image source: Future Stars of Tech

Ayaka (middle) with her Future Star Award pictured with Dr. Kathryn O'Donnell (left) and Julia Hardy (right). Image source: Future Stars of Tech

Ayaka is part of the machine learning team at Techspert – an AI-driven expert network connecting organizations with precision-matched expert insight to help them make more informed decisions. The team has built and trained an AI technology that trawls trillions of publicly available online data points to map the world’s expertise. Techspert then matches organizations seeking expertise with experts who possess it. Her role is to automate the data collection process, ensuring the information collected by the AI from online public sources is rich, contextualized, and accurate. She has also pioneered the integration of educational seminars at Techspert, helping to share information and mentor new members of the team, an achievement which particularly impressed the judges at the Future Stars of Tech. Ayaka is also a founding member of the Cambridge chapter of Women in AI (WAI), a non-profit working towards gender-inclusive AI that benefits global society, and camb.ai, a society that brings together AI companies in Cambridge for networking and knowledge sharing.

“The Future Stars of Tech Awards are all about inspiring, celebrating, and empowering the next generation of female technology leaders in the UK,” commented Dr. Kathryn O'Donnell – Director of In-Space Missions and Spacetime Enterprises, and Future Stars of Tech Awards judge. “Ayaka’s mentoring initiatives and the impact of her work at Techspert are truly impressive. Our intention is that this platform will encourage her, and other young women in tech, to continue to close the gender and diversity gap in the technology industry,” she concluded.

Being an advocate of diversity in tech, Ayaka was delighted by the opportunity and with the support of the leadership team at Techspert submitted her application before being announced as part of the 2019 shortlist. With three other candidates working in automation also shortlisted for the award, Ayaka was announced as the winner during the recent ceremony.

Ayaka being announced a winner

Ayaka Shinozaki, a machine-learning engineer at Techspert, winner of the Automation Future Star award

“It was an honor to represent women in tech,” commented Ayaka. “It’s important for everyone to have opportunities like this at the start of their career. It helps build confidence and the entire process from the application to the ceremony has accelerated my drive to succeed. I’m so grateful to be part of such a positive movement of women in tech; the level of diversity promoted at the ceremony was especially impressive. I’ve never been surrounded by so many diverse and leading women in my life! I’m inspired to keep participating in opportunities like this so that our cohort becomes the norm in the tech industry.”

After the ceremony, Ayaka returned to Cambridge with her award and continues to develop leading automation tools at Techspert while being an active member of the Cambridge AI scene. “I’m excited to see how the female side of the tech industry grows. It’s a fast-paced and challenging environment but I can’t wait to be part of the new wave of female tech leaders inspiring the next generation,” Ayaka concluded.

About Techspert

Techspert is an AI-driven expert network connecting organizations with precision-matched expert insight to help them make more informed decisions. They’ve developed an AI technology that trawls trillions of publicly available online data points to map the world’s expertise and deliver primary insight more precisely than traditional expert networks.

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