About Aquaculture Insights - Mission and Team Members

Our project, Aquaculture Insights, aims to build an Open Data Platform integrated with an end-to-end, sensor-to-cloud IoT solution to:

Facilitate Visualisation

Various project partners have come together to create a unique solution for the aquaculture industry and to help visualise this to meet the sector’s needs.

Connectivity

Our Open Data Platform will help to transfer critical measurement parameter data from connected devices and systems.

Digital Transformation

The project’s goal is to help digitise the global aquaculture industry, enabling farms to be more productive and sustainable.

Digital transformation of the aquaculture industry aims to give salmon farmers insight and control of their data, enabling analytics and AI to be applied to a wide range of variables.

We aim to optimise operations: maximising the healthy growth of fish, while minimising costs. We are confident that using our system will result in higher food safety and traceability via better environmental stewardship, providing an economical and ecologically sound healthy protein source for global consumers.

This project has received funding from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). This body of the European Union receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Our Mission:
Exceptional people delivering an expectational platform

By connecting data assets, creating insights and improving efficiency, we serve the aquaculture industry with the means to improve their competitiveness and growth potential.

In order to do this, we have assembled a leading IoT technology provider, a seasoned aquaculture innovation institute, an experienced digital marketer, the world’s No1 LED lighting supplier and an industry-leading biomass camera provider to participate in the consortium.

The Consortium

As a market leader in salmon biomass sensor development, Optoscale will be vital in understanding data and insight from AI cameras. With sensors already deployed to a number of sites internationally, access to a selection of Optoscale’s existing data streams and the ability to test and integrate with their proprietary hardware will be vital for the successful launch of the solution.

Establishment of business model and go-to-market strategy will be orchestrated by SoftBank Corp.’s European subsidiary, whose main role will be the planning and execution of our marketing strategy and go-to-market plans. It will also assist the business champion after the commercialisation stage to bring the platform to wider application and deployment utilising the SoftBank group network.

The world’s leading LED lighting supplier to the aquaculture industry will lead the integration of underwater LED lighting solutions and sensors. Since data from these will be connected to the platform optimising the aquatic lighting environment, they will also be a customer/user of the data platform. Signify will also assist in reaching potential customers utilising their industry network.

Uhuru United will manage the overall project and develop the core platform that integrates various components and functionality of salmon farm hardware and software. With expertise in IoT consulting, engineering, data analytics and IP management, our platform will be brought to market with the support of our customer and technology partners.

SAIC-strapline - Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Centre

SAIC will sit as an advisor and consultant to provide aquaculture industry knowledge and technological expertise. As the data and local knowledge partner, they will work with their comprehensive network of Scottish salmon farms to connect the development team with potential customers at the appropriate level, negotiate access, and translate technical requirements.

The Team

Signify

Philips Aquaculture lighting/Signify addresses the specific needs of hatchery and grow-out sites either on land or off shore and have been developed in close collaboration with leading universities and institutes. Our lights incorporate the most advanced LED chipsets and controls with the finest marine grade materials ensuring durability under the toughest conditions.Explore the next generation of submersible aquaculture lighting. Choosing for the best high-powered aquaculture LED lights can make a huge difference to your business. Our range of lights have shown to achieve 0% maturation losses, support the growth with double digits and lower the food conversion ratio. In sea cages our lights have proven to significantly lower the exposure to sea lice, thanks to our unique light distribution, reducing sea lice treatment up to 50%.

Michiel Van der Meer

Michiel Van der Meer has a PhD in Physical Chemistry (femtosecond time resolved laser spectroscopy) from the university of Amsterdam.

Joined Philips Lighting in June 2000 as an engineer and moved on to product specialist and R&D group leader for 16 years in Special lighting UV (disinfection, medical, body care, insect trap) and now managing Aquaculture R&D

I hope we can make the next step in helping optimisation of fish farming with data from our lighting system and its sensors to better predict the growth and give the farmers tools to plan their production more efficiently. With this we can also add to the sustainability goals of our company and the rest of the world.

Marcel de Jong

Marcel de Jong has a Mechanical Engineering MSc Degree from Eindhoven University of Technology (1995). His professional career started with Philips Electronics in Eindhoven as development engineer, working on magnetic storage systems.

In 2003 Marcel joined the design center (Amsterdam) of Sonion company, as department head process engineering, working on miniature audio transducers for hearing aids and professional in-ear-monitoring products. In 2008 Marcel joined Philips Lighting in Eindhoven (now Signify) as R&D project manager for front end innovation projects and has since worked on automotive LED front lighting, connected lighting systems and agriculture lighting systems and services.

Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Centre

SAIC is delighted to be involved in the Open Data Platform for Salmon Aquaculture project. Our purpose is to transform Scottish aquaculture by unlocking sustainable growth through innovation excellence, and we believe this undertaking to have transformational potential for the sector. Given our extensive experience of the opportunities, practicalities and challenges of salmon farming, and our close connection with Scotland’s aquaculture sector, we are confident of adding real value to this project. (Heather Jones SAIC CEO)

Sarah Riddle

Director of Business Engagement

Sarah brings more than 17 years’ experience to her role as SAIC’s Director of Business Engagement, having previously worked at Scottish Sea Farms and Aquascot.

Sarah has also provided strategic support for organisations such as the Scottish Association of Marine Science, and has helped many businesses to secure funding and deliver innovation, research and development projects in the aquaculture sector.

As Director of Business Engagement, Sarah leads a programme to support SAIC’s £10 million Phase II strategy.

Uhuru United

Uhuru offers one stop service covering every factor necessary for IoT based on our expertise in formulating business strategies, providing technological support and creating communication strategies. Uhuru provides comprehensive support for all of our clients’ data needs, from analytics to data-based strategy formulation, to planning and implementation. We fulfil users’ requirements for every phase of data utilisation, from data collection, processing and analysis, to planning strategy based on analysis results.

Yosuke Kurihara

Director / CEO

Yo joined Uhuru in 2015 as an executive committee member and is currently based in London leading its overseas HQ Uhuru United Ltd. as CEO while directing data / DX projects for the governments, local administrations, and private firms in UK and Japan. His focus is to lead developments of solution in sustainable supply chain involving with key players in edge computing such as sensor manufactures and to build cloud platforms for data to be exchanged with trustability. He was born and raised in Chigasaki, Japan with the beautiful Pacific Ocean and studied at State University of New York at Buffalo majoring in marketing and branding with a hell of a lot of snow and Niagara Falls nearby. Started his career as a producer and strategic consultant at Dentsu, a creative and marketing agency group in Japan. Bushcraft camper, Muay Thai beginner, Punk-rock guitarist wannabe.

Eric Wolfe

Director, Global Alliances

Eric has spent the last 20 years in Japan and has been with Uhuru for the last 7. He has been a data and device junkie for years, going back to cycling days (which has only gotten worse with triathlon technology). In his mind, his experience with cycling technology is a spiritual precursor to the internet of things.

This project brings together several personal and professional interests and passions – salmon (his favourite fish), improved productivity (work smarter, not harder) which will lead to better environmental stewardship and sustainability (using fewer resources to lower environmental impact to achieve higher and better quality output).

This project will showcase Uhuru’s strengths in IoT – combining the data from state of the art devices, such as biomass cameras and lighting systems, as well as linking with other systems and data sources, along with our expertise in data visualisation to intuitively display complex data, making it easier for workers to interpret and act upon.

Eric has high hopes that the knowledge gained from this project will be able to be transferred throughout the salmon farming industry, and indeed ported to other types of aquaculture and farming, enabling humanity to realise improved efficiencies and sustainability throughout our food value chain.

Yusuke Yamasaki

Project Management & Design

Experience leading a similar project in Japan and was responsible for working on-site at client’s facility to successfully plan and execute the creation and development of an aquaculture support system based on the new sensor technology provided by a collaboration partner for land-based shrimp farming, including architecting a combined hardware/software data monitoring system and the design of sensor data dashboard. Provided IoT / Digital transformation consulting services to a variety of industries. Enjoy partnering with a variety of stakeholders to deliver effective solutions to real-world pain points.

James Bateman

Project Management & Design

James started his career as an equity analyst at JP Morgan. After a few years in the world of finance, he moved to Tokyo to explore new opportunities, which is where he became interested in Software and Technology and ended up joining Uhuru. He became Managing Director of the UK and was tasked with opening a new office based in London, focusing on developing the business in the UK and Europe.

The world of Salmon aquaculture is extremely ripe for the type of digital transformation that Uhuru excels at. I think that bringing knowledge and skills from the world of IoT will have a massive impact on the work that farmers do, improving all aspects of their business. I am excited to see the benefits that will be brought by better and more comprehensive collection of data from sensors, and subsequent prediction models based on this data.

OptoScale

OptoScale is a leading company in the smart camera industry, and has customers for its solution in many of the main salmon-producing countries. Together with fish farmers Optoscale have developed its own easy to use software for accessing, viewing, and exporting relevant data about your fish, all through your browser. Achieve greater insights in growth per day across several fish cages, locations, or even regions to boost your overall productivity. Their software contains the following modules:

Overview of your farm and BioScopes
Weight development
Comparative analyses – how is the fish cage 1 growing compared to cage 2?
Weight distribution
Export functionality

The data they generate is only useful once it has been interpreted by users on the fish farm. This has been taken into careful consideration when they built the software.

Why we are in the project:

This project has the same ambition as our vision for OptoScale – to be able to provide fish farmers with high quality and relevant information, enabling better decision making. Working together with the reputable partners in the project is very rewarding to us, and we are looking forward to achieving great things together, across both countries and continents.

SB Telecom Europe

Working closely with all consortium members, we will be focusing on setting digital marketing strategy and campaign implementation in B2B Digital marketing. We aim to create new business leads and promote the product/solution by implementing various marketing measures.

“We are highly excited to be working in Scotland to bring advanced digital solutions to market with the aim of transforming the fish farming sector in Scotland and internationally. EIT Digital and the fantastic Scottish ecosystem have worked tirelessly to ensure that Scottish fish farming leads this technology and directly benefits from its wider commercial deployment.” Akihiro Kato (MD)

Akira Saito

Experienced sales and new business development manager with a history of leading an international brand with B2B and B2C marketing. Enthusiastic and skilled in international sales & marketing, e-commerce, customer retention, operations management etc, all by using data driven insight to create the right commercial conditions to maximise performance across sales channels. Aside from enjoying the thrill of data-driven marketing and developing new businesses, a strong interest and knowledge in salmon aquaculture and trading from previous career paths and a passion for building a great team would be helping all team members to fully engage and enjoy working together in achieving project goals.