Research scholar Aman Wakade has commenced work with Digital Planning as part of its PhD sponsorship project with the University of Derby.
An expert in artificial intelligence focused on delivering real-world impact in healthcare, Aman commenced work this month.
He will lead a pioneering 4-year project with the University of Derby and focused on federated learning for improving the healthcare services of a primary care network.
Aman will simultaneously research the use of federated learning for training AI models alongside specialists at Loughborough-based Digital Planning.
Federated learning involves the training of models across silos – without compromising privacy or data classification.
It uses technology to establish a defensive technical ‘moat’ to support scalable, secure, and decentralised intelligence.
Such models are particularly important in highly data-sensitive sectors such as healthcare, finance, and defence.
As such, Aman’s research will link directly to the schema used by Digital Planning’s emerging Metis technology in modelling business requirements in secure organisations.
And it will support Digital Planning’s work in transforming cutting-edge academic research into commercially viable AI usages.
Digital Planning co-founder Mark Underwood said:
This partnership will help us to directly develop our service offer to clients while simultaneously strengthening our ties with academia.
Projects such as this are positioning Digital Planning as both a hub for innovation and a pipeline for sector-leading future talent.
Ben Hutchings, Digital Planning Machine Learning Engineer, said:
This collaboration represents our commitment to turning state-of-the-art academic research into real-world impact.
By advancing federated learning, we’re unlocking industries previously constrained by data sensitivity — and doing it in a way that’s secure, scalable, and practical.”
Aman previously worked as a software engineer at Genpact, where he also completed a capstone project on fraud detection in retail transactions.
He has a master’s degree in computer applications from the National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, and has already published several papers within his field.
Dr Aaisha Makkar, a Lecturer in Computer Science in university’s College of Science and Engineering, led the recruitment process and said:
Aman has a strong background in both research and commercial applications and is a deserving candidate for this partnership.
