Faculty Science Ltd is a British technology company based in London, founded in 2014, by Marc Warner. Warner is a graduate student of Harvard and London Centre for Nanotechnology. ASI has worked on more than 200 artificial intelligence projects, with partners including London Irish, easyJet, Tesco and the BBC. The company is focused on AI technology. The company was a supplier to the Vote Leave campaign during the 2016 United Kingdom EU referendum. Their tools include SherlockML, a data science platform "for accessing large amounts of data, which can be used to design and test artificial intelligence models." Previous work included building a tool to identify and block ISIS propaganda, and work for EasyJet and London Irish rugby club. In February 2019, the company rebranded as Faculty.
UK government
The Guardian reported in May 2020 that Faculty had won seven government contracts in 18 months at a time when Warner's brother Ben had gone to work with Dominic Cummings as a data scientist. The newspaper noted that "Faculty is working at the heart of the government’s response to the pandemic. It has been processing large volumes of confidential UK patient information in an “unprecedented” data-mining operation". SherlockML is a python-based AI software tool, which was unveiled during an event at PyCon UK in October 2017. In February 2018, the Home Office and ASI developed a terrorist content blocking tool that identifies 94% of Daesh propaganda that prevents it from being uploaded to the Internet. During the coronavirus pandemic, Faculty and US company Palantir carried out data analysis work for the government. In May 2020, it was reported that Faculty had secured a £400,000 contract with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to "analyse social media data, utility bills and credit rating scores" in order to "identify trends, and then develop "interactive dashboards" to inform policymakers". The contract was awarded directly to Faculty without it being put out to tender for other firms to bid on, according to the Guardian.
