Abdulrazaq is a Software Engineer as part of our Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with WASE and UWE Bristol. A KTP is a UK-wide, 3-way partnership between a business, a university and talented graduate, and aims to help businesses improve competitiveness and productivity, whilst also boosting the career prospects of the graduate.
WASE and the College of Arts, Technology and Environment (CATE) at UWE Bristol began their KTP together in April 2025. The KTP will create a machine learning-based soft sensing platform. This platform will be integrated within WASE’s Electro-Methanogenesis Reactor (EMR) to remotely optimise system performance. The system will help expand EMR technology, allowing customers to treat wastewater on-site while generating energy, reducing carbon emissions, and producing cleaner water and nutrients for use as fertilizers.
The project aim is to develop game-changing improvements to the EMR technology by enhancing the system’s monitoring and adaptability. This will ensure minimal downtime and maximum value from the waste. The improvements will involve optimizing WASE’s industrial-scale system and improving predictive analytics in anaerobic digestion (AD). We will use feedback from microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) modules to enhance sensor accuracy.
The KTP team caught up with Abdulrazaq to hear about their experience of the KTP so far:
What attracted you to the position?
I’m drawn to the role for several reasons. Primarily, it’s the excitement around the project’s potential — what we can achieve and the path to getting there. I enjoy challenges and solving problems, and this feels like the perfect project for someone like me. I’m especially excited about helping position WASE at the forefront of innovation in the anaerobic digestion (AD) sector through the application of AI and operational automation.
Another reason is the role’s position at the intersection of academia and industry. Having previously worked in academia, I’ve been considering a transition into the industry. This opportunity allows me to bridge both worlds. Finally, the sustainability aspect is very important to me. I’ve worked on a project that was somewhat related to sustainability, and being part of an initiative that contributes to a healthier climate is truly rewarding.
What are you most looking forward to?
I’m most looking forward to realising the project’s objectives. I say “realising” because I genuinely believe they’re achievable, even though the journey might be challenging. Reaching those goals will be a testament to the work, support, and growth that come along the way. It will also reflect the level WASE will have reached — and I’m excited to be a key contributor to that progress.
How is the partnership between UWE Bristol and the company working?
It’s only my third week so far, but the partnership has been fantastic. Everyone at both the company and the university has been incredibly supportive and engaged, which is great because it shows that everyone is equally invested in the project. One thing that stands out to me is how they’ve managed to involve the right people — experts who understand exactly what we need to do. That alignment is crucial to the project’s success, and I think they’ve nailed it.
What are the major benefits/support available from UWE Bristol?
The major sources of support from UWE have been the academic team and the KTP team. The KTP team has been actively involved from the start, guiding me through key steps and helping me understand the important elements of the partnership. The academic team has also been very supportive and clearly committed to mentoring and guiding me throughout the project.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
Although it’s only my third week, it already feels like an environment where I’ll get to learn a lot — especially about anaerobic digestion, a field I hadn’t worked in before. The learning curve is steep, but that only makes it more exciting. The people here have also been amazing. They could probably list “Family” as one of their core values, because that’s exactly how they operate — with a strong sense of unity and belonging. That culture really helps drive a shared sense of purpose.
I’m a sociologist of education. My research, which tends to be qualitative in nature, focuses on education and social justice. I’m especially interested in how educational systems, processes and experiences can either challenge, reproduce or reinforce existing social inequalities, particularly those involving social class and gender.
We often hear people talking about how education can lead to social mobility and that going to university puts everyone on a level playing field. It’s often assumed that if you go to university and get a degree, then you’re then starting your career on the same equal footing as every other graduate. That, whatever your socioeconomic background, you can go and compete for the same jobs. Fairly, equally. But that’s just not true. You can’t. As our recent Paired Peers longitudinal research study showed.
Capitals and gains
This particular study was submitted to the REF and highlighted by the British Education Research Association as being particularly impactful and able to change people’s lives. The study followed 88 young people over 10 years. We interviewed them repeatedly and gathered lots of other data from them. We looked at what they brought with them into university, in terms of their personal resources and what we call ‘capitals’. That’s their social capital, economic capital, and cultural capital.
We followed these 88 young people as they moved through university and into the workplace. We looked at the subjects they chose, the activities they were involved in, the skills and knowledge they gained – within and beyond the university environment – and the careers they aspired to.
Breaking down barriers
Now, many of these people already knew that, for them, a degree wouldn’t be enough to land the job they wanted. They needed a really ‘shiny’, stand-out CV, with loads of experiences and transferable skills on it. But that’s easier for some than others. For example, if you’re from a wealthier background, you don’t necessarily need to think about part-time work. You immediately have more time to focus on other things. But that’s much harder to do if you’re working in a shop or a bar for 20+ hours a week to pay your bills. Then you can’t afford to spend your time on things that will enhance your CV.
We also found real barriers to doing things like internships or work experience, which often aren’t particularly well paid. Say you’re well-connected and have family or friends in London or another big city. If you take up a work placement, for example, you can go stay with them. Many people can’t. They simply can’t afford to go and do these things. Or they don’t have contacts who can get them into graduate internship schemes or offer other similar opportunities.
Widening participation
So, my research really highlighted the inequalities that exist before young people even get to university and that grow while they’re there. How some groups of people start with a stronger hand which only reinforces the gap when they graduate.
To help all students make the most of their university experience, to get the most out of it, we must find ways to help them actively participate. To properly widen participation, if you like. Because true participation is much more than just access to university.
If you want people to truly participate at university, you need to be able to somehow level the playing field. Bursaries can really help. If you’re from a low-income background, a bursary doesn’t just help financially but it somehow validates your place at university too. And it may allow you to work fewer hours in your part-time job. So, you can spend a bit more time studying or doing other things. Like joining a sports team, for example.
We can help with internships too. For example, here at UWE Bristol we had a subsidised internship scheme whereby we paid a certain amount of an undergraduate’s salary for a short period.
Everyone benefits
And all this doesn’t just benefit the individual; it benefits society. It helps people from different backgrounds consider careers or roles that they couldn’t previously. We all know the importance of diversity and representation. We need more of that, for example, in many of the boardrooms of our top companies. Because from businesses to public services, it’s vital that we see people from a diverse range of backgrounds. Better for individuals, better for business, better for society.
So yes, I guess I’m ultimately driven by social justice. I try to make a real difference to individual lives, whether it’s through the classes I teach, the events I speak at, or the research I carry out.
Contribution to the UN 2030 sustainable development goals
UWE Bristol is proud to align our research to the UN sustainable development goals. The above research aligns with the following goals:
Sibling sexual behaviour and abuse (SSB-A) is an emerging research area in the field of preventing and responding to harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) in children and young people (CYP). Over the last five years the authors have been involved in several research projects (including the first government commissioned national sibling sexual abuse project for the Home Office with SARSAS, Purple Leaf and Dr Sophie King-Hill from the University of Birmingham)have worked with a number of national and international organisations (#SiblingsToo and Thriving Survivors) and have published with others on SSB-A (including but not limited to Dr Sophie King-Hill, David Russell, Dr Peter Yates and Stuart Allardyce – for a list of relevant publications please see the resource and the UWE repository). Over this period, it has occurred to the authors that while the research and evidence base on SSB-A is emerging and has long been central to the work of many professional organisations and frontline services, these services rarely carry out research or collate an evidence base on their practices and outcomes relating to SSB-A. This is mainly because frontline services lack time, resources, funding and research experience to carry out this work alongside their practice. To support services/organisations/professionals who want to become more outcomes focussed and evaluate their work regarding SSB-A, the authors using internal impact related funding from UWE, have developed a research and evaluation framework for SSB-A.
The research and evaluation framework has been developed and is underpinned by the authors’ research experience and knowledge of the area of SSB-A, as well as the extensive research and evaluation carried out by them in the field of sexual abuse. The framework provides the current research context of SSB-A and states why we need a better practice-based evidence base, before highlighting the most effective methodologies for doing this and how they can be best understood, interpreted and evidenced by practitioners. The framework is underpinned by a wellbeing and trauma-informed approach and a public health and development perspective. Moreover, as SSB-A is a family systems issue it needs a family systems response, especially if uncovered or disclosed in childhood, as such the framework addresses and centralises a ‘whole family’ perspective.
Given the complicated nature of reporting and recording data on SSB-A, whether the behaviour and abuse was disclosed and reported in childhood (therefore framed as harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) and an ongoing child protection issue) or in adulthood (as a victim services issue as well as potentially a criminal justice issue), evaluating the topic can be challenging. The framework offers insights to collecting and evidencing outcomes for five distinct but interrelated populations:
Children and young people (CYP) who has been harmed
CYP responsible for the harm
Parent and carers of CYP impacted by SSB-A
Adults who as children were responsible for harm
Adult victim-survivors of SSB-A
The framework also provides examples of the research questions, data that needs to be collected for each of these groups, providing worked examples and data collection tools and analysis guidelines. It is hoped that this framework will be of use to practitioners in developing their own evidence base in SSB-A and that this in turn will feed into academic research as well as improving commission, evidence-based practice and improve outcomes for everyone impacted by SSB-A.
The framework is a free resource and can be found on the UWE website.
Amy and Kieran would like to thank New Wave , especially Jessica Jolliffe and Kaela Earl-Tester, for all their work on the production of the final document.
Dr Saliha Saad, Associate Professor in Biomedical Sciences
I have a medical background with expertise in oral microbiology.
My work is mainly around oral biofilms. Biofilms are layers of bacterial communities that accumulate on many surfaces including the teeth, gums, and the tongue.
We know that the biofilm on the tongue can cause oral malodour also called bad breath. This condition which is of microbial aetiology is not life-threatening however, people who suffer from it can have, a complicated life. They can get isolated. It really affects their quality of life.
Tackling bad breath, increasing confidence
Bad breath is a very complex issue; however, it is well accepted that the volatile compounds produced by bacterial metabolism on the tongue are responsible for oral malodour.
I have been collaborating with many large companies in this area, including GSK, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Philips, Colgate-Palmolive to develop and test antimicrobial formulations and tools that can control this condition by reducing the number of microbes and the volatile compounds they produce.
Sniffing out disease
My work in this area also led to something very important. I am now exploring the link between the oral microbiome and systemic diseases, like diabetes. We know that there is a strong link between gum disease and diabetic foot ulcers. In collaboration with Aryballe, we want to be able to detect early stage of diabetic foot ulcers using electronic nose NeOse that ‘sniffs’ the mouth and the foot.
This means that we don’t have to swab the infected area. Taking a swab can be intrusive and labour intensive. It takes time to get results back too. So, we can speed this up and act to help the patient quicker and prevent severe complications like gangrene which often requires toe or limb amputation.
Early detection saves lives
The mouth is accessible and sampling mouth air is non-invasive. If we can detect disease early, we can reduce the burden on the NHS. We can save time, money and, importantly, save lives.
Contribution to the UN 2030 sustainable development goals
UWE Bristol is proud to align our research to the UN sustainable development goals. The above research aligns with the following goals:
While you’ll find me in the School of Engineering, I’m a social psychologist and science communicator. I study people and their engagement with technology.
That means that most of my work is done with groups and communities. Because we humans are social creatures. We want to live and thrive together. And I believe that communities are the answer to the big questions of today. I’m really focused on how we can make sure that communities stay together, stay connected and stay resilient, so that we can live with our changing times.
Communities drive change
I encourage communities to tell us what their problems are and what they need us to work on. Naturally, this has taken me a lot into the area of sustainability and climate change – and how we can work together, solve problems and make a real world, on-the-ground difference.
Because yes, I’m driven to make a difference. Action is everything right now. And action happens within our communities. But we have to inspire action and show that it’s possible for communities to affect change.
Be what you can see
For instance, some of my work has been about minority and underrepresented groups working in technology and engineering. So, there’s this classic phrase: you can’t be what you can’t see. And that’s really important. Representation matters. We need to show that different people, diverse people, are working in this area and making a real difference. Seeing that there are role models doing this right now is so important. It’s inspiring. And we want to excite the next generation and show them that they can too.
We’re also active in policy development. We’re working with local councils to show them how they can embed citizen-led climate ideas and action into policy. How we can connect awesome community projects with the policies that are going through right now. Again, a lot of this comes back to getting community voices heard, and making sure that there’s diversity and representation at all levels.
We are all the difference
As a social psychologist, I’m all about groups. As I said at the start, we’re social creatures. We want to look out for each other. My passion, my work, is to support communities to come together and make a difference to each other – and the environment we all live in.
Contribution to the UN 2030 sustainable development goals
UWE Bristol is proud to align our research to the UN sustainable development goals. The above research aligns with the following goals:
UWE Bristol is proud to highlight the achievements of Dr. Jack Lowe, based in the Digital Cultures Research Centre, who recently completed the prestigious ARC Accelerate programme. Jack spent six months transforming his innovative ideas into a scalable venture, with the support of this AHRC/ESRC-funded initiative.
About ARC Accelerate
ARC Accelerate is a 6-month accelerator programme designed to help researchers in social sciences, arts, and humanities transform their ideas into market-ready products and services. The programme offers up to £62,500 in funding, along with comprehensive support including training, mentorship, and networking opportunities.
Dr. Jack Lowe: Pin the Tale
Jack has developed Pin the Tale, a digital game that strengthens community ties to place using the what3words app. In the game, players use what3words addresses to write stories about specific locations, creating connections between narrative and place. This innovative approach encourages players to explore and share their experiences of different locations through storytelling.
For Jack, the ARC programme offered a transformative perspective on research commercialisation. He reflects:
“Commercialisation doesn’t have to mean profiteering. Instead, it is most useful as a lens for thinking about how to sustain the impact of your work, whatever form that might take.”
The programme’s structured support and resources proved invaluable:
“Having a dedicated period of paid time focused solely on my venture, and being able to fully pay my collaborators for their work, resulted in an outcome that simply would not have been possible otherwise.”
Through engaging with multiple stakeholders during the programme, Jack gained crucial insights into how his platform could meet real-world needs. Each public workshop has provided new learning opportunities about the challenges and possibilities his game presents.
Project Progress and Future Plans
Since completing the ARC Accelerate programme, Jack has successfully launched Pin the Tale in early-access to the public. The game is now freely available online, inviting users to discover and create stories connected to specific locations across the UK.
“At its heart, Pin the Tale is about re-connecting individuals and communities to the places they live in, visit or care about. It’s about going beyond the ‘official’ stories of places; the ones we might be familiar with from history lessons or books. Pin the Tale aims to be much more intimate, inspiring and creative, where ‘culture’ and ‘heritage’ is something to be uncovered in people’s own stories and the stories of others in their communities.”
The game offers two key experiences:
Discovering stories about places you’re interested in: Navigate on the map to an area of the UK that you’re interested in. Click the Find Stories button to read stories other people have written about places in that area.
Share your own stories: Zoom into a UK location on the map that you want to write a story about. Click the square closest to the spot your story is about, then click ‘Write a story about this location’. Stories on Pin the Tale can take any creative form: fictional, poetic, historical, personal, informative, imaginative.
Jack emphasises the experiential nature of the game:
“When learning about the world around you feels like a process of discovery – when it engages your imagination – that’s when it becomes exciting. We want to evoke that feeling in our players.”
The project continues to gain recognition within the academic community, with Pin the Tale being selected as a featured project at this year’s Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference, where it aligns perfectly with the conference theme of ‘Geography and Creativity.’
Support for UWE Researchers
UWE is committed to supporting our researchers in transforming their innovative ideas into real-world impact. Jack’s success in the ARC Accelerate programme demonstrates the potential of our research community to drive positive change through commercialisation.
“Technology is a great enabler. It can make a real difference to our lives. That is why we are using eye-tracking technology and machine learning to aid the early diagnosis of crippling neurodegenerative diseases. ”
Dr Wenhao Zhang, Associate Professor of Computer Vision and Machine Learning
I currently have two main streams of research. One is around agriculture technology, using computer vision and machine learning. The other one is to adapt and apply a similar set of techniques to a very different interdisciplinary challenge: healthcare tech. I am looking at how we can use eye tracking and machine learning for disease diagnosis.
The eyes have it
Eye tracking is a really interesting area – for me personally and for useful, real-world applications – because eye movements are quite an important type of human behaviour. They tell people about your attention, for example, Are you interested? Are you tired? and potentially other clinical signs useful to disease diagnosis. We can absolutely read a lot from eye movements.
Our ambition is to use eye movement information, combined with machine learning analysis, to tell you if you might have a neurodegenerative disease such as dementia or its early pre-disease stages. We are in the early stages of our research work, and we are taking a very novel approach to diagnosis. But we believe in what we are doing based on evidence shown in the relevant literature and the successes we have had with applying machine vision and machine learning to other research areas. The ultimate aim is to enable everyone to be able to undertake eye tracking tests in their own home.
Pick up and play
Essentially, we are working to create a kind of an eye tracking test for dementia. The current gold-standard tests commonly need to be administered by a clinician. It takes time. It is labour intensive. It’s inconvenient for everyone really. Despite the availability of newer forms of eye tracking tests, you have to sit there and complete a visual task, which can be tracking a dot moving in different directions on a screen. The task can be somewhat counterintuitive. And it’s not fully representative of your cognitive functions and higher-level thinking skills.
What we want to do is build everything into a game. A game you can play on your laptop, phone and tablet. A game that uses the built-in camera to track and record your eye movements.
Through machine learning analysis of subtle but high-speed eye movement, we aim to spot errors in movement trajectories, latencies in responses to stimuli, and other more complex eye movement patterns. We would then compare those patterns to a healthy group of people who are not cognitively impaired and also to people who have dementia.
Increasing the data set
Also, by making the test more accessible we can increase our data set which often improves machine learning performance. While there are already commercial eye trackers available, they are commonly very, very expensive. Also, people can’t get to or use them easily, especially people who have a neurodegenerative condition. Through our research work, we want to enable just a normal webcam, or the camera on your phone or tablet, to achieve accurate and ubiquitous eye tracking. And ultimately, the more accessible the test, the more people will use it, and the bigger difference we can make.
Looking to tomorrow
Once we are up and running, we want to conduct some kind of longitudinal study. To see, for example, what happens if you play the game once a day or a few times a day. What happens over the course of a year. Are there any neuropsychological changes detectable by our approach? Could playing the game delay the onset of dementia? How early could dementia be detected before clinical symptoms manifest? Certain aspects of our future work are entirely hypothetical, but these are the kind of questions we want to ask of ourselves.
Contribution to the UN 2030 sustainable development goals
UWE Bristol is proud to align our research to the UN sustainable development goals. The above research aligns with the following goals:
I work closely with minoritised communities around their sexual health and on marginalisation through sexual violence. Recent BMA award winning work has been with young survivors of sexual violence.
Collaborating with local partners, the Greenhouse and the Bridge SARC via Bristol Health Partners Sexual Health Improvement Health Integration Team (SHIP HIT), we set out to put survivors of child sexual abuse in charge of improving sexual health services for survivors like them in the city.
Their voice, their path
We supported young survivors to redesign the way that their treatment worked. We paid attention to power dynamics to ensure real co-production. We produced a new patient pathway guided by a kind of a passport or map to help children, young people and their carers find their way through the service, through the journey.
The map showed them all their options and put them in charge of decisions about where they could go and what it was like. We used bitesize videos to show them what they could expect, what the sexual health clinic looks like, who you’ll be meeting, here’s the room, here’s the process. For all of us involved, it was – always is – about finding the options that they like, what’s going to work for these young survivors.
More power to the individual
Throughout the design process, we used safe, trauma informed art based methods to uncover what survivors needed from a service. The young survivors designed different characters and imagined what each would need. At the end, we also asked them to tell us how to evaluate the work, if it was for them, what do they think success looks like.
For me, it’s about giving power to these unheard voices and in the case of trauma survivors, the process needs to be restorative, giving them back voice and options. And I guess that’s the thread in my work. I’m passionate about listening to people to find out what they need – not what we assume or think they need. That’s so important.
This is true across a range of groups I work with, there’s never one answer. I have other research students working with minoritised groups including black men in London telling us what they need from sexual health services, sexual violence survivors telling us what stops them using healthcare and what support male sex workers need. We are looking for funding to build a digital community around their sexual needs. The latest project I am working on is to get refugee and asylum seekers better served by sexual health and gender-based violence services.
Trusted to make a real difference
I love what I do. I really love listening to people’s stories – and helping to tell them, to share them. It’s an honour in many ways. But there’s real responsibility too. I work with groups that have often suffered trauma. And so it’s incredibly important that these survivors can see that their stories making real world change. I recently handed over £2000 in BMA prize money to the young survivors at Greenhouse who co-produced the patient pathway and they will decide how to spend it.
Because that’s what it’s all about. What we do has to make a change. It has to result in improvements. So yes, I tell my students that we’re here to change the world. Not just here to find out about it, but to make it better.
Contribution to the UN 2030 sustainable development goals
UWE Bristol is proud to align our research to the UN sustainable development goals. The above research aligns with the following goals:
I’m a research fellow in the Unconventional Computing Lab. It’s a European funded project (COGiTOR) to make liquid robots.
We are working to produce liquid computing and biological computers. Holonomic memory and computing, pressure sensing, and energy harvesting from thermal gradients will be achieved using colloids. These will have a lot of benefits for the environment. Liquid robots are completely environmentally friendly too. They can be recycled easily in the environment.
New, novel, next
My great passion is to change the world and help the environment. I believe that through our work we can make a very big difference in the future. This is exciting to me. What we are doing is new and novel.
I love what I do. And being in research at UWE Bristol is very inspiring and you’re constantly learning.
Contribution to the UN 2030 sustainable development goals
UWE Bristol is proud to align our research to the UN sustainable development goals. The above research aligns with the following goals:
The Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between University of the West of England (UWE), Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), the Taro Agric Farm (TAF) was established to harness data-enabled innovations (DEI) for the commercial poultry industry in Nigeria. The project aimed to enhance chicken production efficiency and optimise overall business operations through the strategic application of data-driven technologies and academic expertise. Kamran Munir (Professor of Data Science) led the collaborative relationship with the Nigerian partners and the project from UWE. Saidu Oseni (Professor of Animal Sciences) led the project from OAU.
The Company
Taro Agric Farm (TAF), is a broiler chicken production company based in Southwest Nigeria. With over a decade of experience, TAF specialises in commercial broiler farming, operating concurrent batches of 2,000 birds per cycle. The company has multiple production centres, including its main base in Ile-Ife, Osun State, and outgrower units in Ilesa (Osun State) and Ibadan (Oyo State). Beyond production, TAF is actively engaged in consulting services, capacity building, and training for poultry farmers, offering expertise across the entire broiler chicken value chain—including input supply, production, processing, distribution, and marketing. A defining characteristic of TAF is its forward-thinking approach to poultry farming. Through the African Agriculture Knowledge Transfer Partnership (AAKTP), TAF successfully integrated smart technologies such as IoT-enabled sensors, a data storage for real-time data management, and predictive analytics to enhance decision-making in poultry production. This has positioned TAF as one of the leaders in leveraging data-driven solutions for sustainable poultry farming in Nigeria.
The Challenge
The Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between Taro Agric Farm (TAF), Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), and the University of the West of England (UWE) was initiated to apply data-enabled innovations (DEI) to commercial chicken production in Nigeria and to improve and optimise business operations. A key focus was developing a strategy for embedding DEI to create sustainable broiler chicken operations over the long term. The poultry industry in Nigeria faces multiple constraints, including high mortality rates, inefficient farm management practices, limited use of data in decision-making, and poor environmental conditions affecting broiler chicken welfare and productivity. In the past, TAF like many others in the industry, relied on conventional methods of managing poultry production, which lacked the real-time monitoring and predictive capabilities needed to optimise productivity and farm environment. Farmers and farm managers had to rely on manual data collection and experience-based intuition, making it difficult to identify early warning signs of health risks or performance inefficiencies. Without data-driven insights, farm operations were reactive rather than proactive, often leading to delayed interventions and losses. In addition, one of the biggest challenges TAF faced in the past was high mortality and morbidity rates in broiler production. Various environmental factors, such as poor ventilation, excessive heat, high humidity, and exposure to noxious gases, particularly ammonia, significantly affected bird health. Without a robust system to monitor and control these environmental conditions, broiler chickens were at risk of disease outbreaks, respiratory problems, and stress, which ultimately led to economic losses.
Tackling these constraints required innovation in both poultry management and business practices to enhance the viability and profitability of operations. The KTP project activities included setting up an IoT platform, configuring sensor nodes, and establishing a database to record and store data on various parameters such as chicken welfare, input supplies, production, processing, distribution, and marketing. The project also involved the development of dashboards for monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs), the use of predictive analytics, and conducting performance comparisons across production batches. Additional activities included stakeholder engagement through workshops to build and embed capacity. The key accomplishments of KTP project include the successful setup, testing, and deployment of a IoT platform in a broiler chicken unit in southwest Nigeria, where key variables related to chicken welfare and performance were captured and monitored. Company data was archived in a database, and a dashboard was developed to track temperature, relative humidity, air quality and noxious gas parameters. An end of project Stakeholders’ Engagement Workshop aiming towards widening participation and sustainability with approximately ~100 participants, including poultry farmers and industry professionals, was also successfully conducted.
“This project equipped TAF staff with advanced digital farming skills, enhanced OAU’s research capacity and curriculum, and strengthened international collaboration—demonstrating how innovation and partnership can drive sustainable agricultural development.”
Prof. Kamran Munir (Professor of Data Science, University of the West of England, UWE Bristol)
Benefits and Changes
The Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between Taro Agric Farm (TAF), Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), and the University of the West of England (UWE) has led to significant improvements in broiler chicken production, farm efficiency, and data-driven decision-making at TAF. As a result of the KTP, Taro Agric Farm and its staff have acquired several new knowledge areas and capabilities. These include (but not limited to):
The staff gained expertise in deploying sensor nodes to monitor key health and welfare indicators of broiler chickens. This application of digital technology is directly contributing to improved productivity and profit margins by enabling real-time data collection and analysis of poultry welfare to guide operations at the unit.
TAF implemented a smart farm infrastructure, incorporating WiFi, inverters, and clusters of sensor nodes, along with smart cameras to monitor the comfort, welfare, and performance of chickens. This integration allows for continuous, remote monitoring, improving operational control and decision-making.
The business acquired the capability to track, manage, and analyse its data assets—spanning performance, ambient conditions, costs, and returns—via a MySQL database. This centralised data storage allows for enhanced data organisation, retrieval, and long-term analysis.
A key capability gained was the deployment of a real-time dashboard that tracks health and welfare indicators of broiler chickens. This dashboard offers a user-friendly interface for staff to monitor key variables and make informed decisions regarding poultry welfare and management.
The staff were trained to track and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) across production batches and historical data. This has allowed TAF to benchmark performance, identify trends, and adjust improve the consistency and quality of production, while also enabling more accurate forecasting and strategic planning
TAF’s adoption of data-enabled innovations (DEI) and IoT technologies positioned it as a leader in digital poultry farming in Nigeria. Sales turnover is expected to increase by 30%-40% within three years, due to improved efficiency and scalability. Profit before tax is projected to grow by 20%, within the next three years. Increased demand for TAF’s consulting services, as other poultry farms seek to implement similar digital solutions.
Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) updated its Animal Sciences curriculum to incorporate digital technologies. The project also strengthened ties between OAU and UWE, fostering international collaboration in poultry technology research. The project research outcomes are being published as open access where possible which cover the use of digital technologies and data-enabled innovations for the enhancement of the welfare and performance of broiler chickens – as a case study in Nigeria.
“The KTP was an excellent opportunity to blend academic research with industry application. At OAU, we have always been committed to advancing precision livestock farming, and this project allowed us to practically demonstrate the power of digital transformation in poultry production.”
Prof. Saidu Oseni (Professor of Animal Sciences, Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, Nigeria)
Key Facts
To best of our knowledge, TAF is the first poultry farm in Nigeria to integrate IoT and digital technologies into broiler production to this scale.
IoT-enabled sensors deployed to monitor temperature, humidity, air quality, and toxic gases in real-time.
A database established for real-time data collection and performance tracking
Decision Support Dashboard developed, allowing farmers to make data-driven decisions
Sales turnover expected to grow by 30 – 40%within three years
Profit before tax projected to increase by 20%
100+ poultry farmers and industry professionals trained on smart poultry farming
19 undergraduate & 2 MSc projects initiated on digital poultry farming at OAU
Presented findings at the Nigerian Poultry Show (NPS) 2024, reinforcing industry leadership
OAU integrated digital technologies into its Animal Sciences curriculum, influencing future research.
Find out more about the Knowledge Transfer Partnership in the Case Study below.
This partnership received financial support from the Knowledge Transfer Partnerships programme (KTP). KTP aims to help businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills that reside within the UK knowledge base. This successful Knowledge Transfer Partnership project, funded by UK Research and Innovation through Innovate UK, is part of the government’s Industrial Strategy.
