Dear Colleagues,

As long-time members of the social simulation and computational economics communities, we have founded a new startup company called Lucidminds (www.lucidminds.ai), with a specific focus on products and services in the areas of AI, Agent-Based Modeling & Simulation, Machine Learning and Data Science. We call it an AI+ABM+Data Science Consultancy.

Our aim is to offer our services to academics, policy makers, and commercial clients.
Below we briefly explain what Lucidminds is all about.

Socially responsible use of AI technology
Since technology is not a purpose in and of itself, but rather a tool to attain our personal and societal goals, it is important to keep in mind the interests of its users. As an AI+ABM+Data Science Consultancy, we are very aware of the recent social and ethical concerns surrounding the use of AI (e.g., data privacy and filter bubbles).

One of the key goals we have in mind with Lucidminds is to support and empower people to use AI technologies in a socially responsible way. To increase the benefits of technology to society and for the social good. This has led us to consider and prioritize hands-on solutions that are in line with our company values.

Our company values are:

• Democratization of AI technology: ordinary citizens and practitioners should be able to use the new tools, while at the same time keep control and ownership of their data.
• Algorithmic transparency: opening the black-box; algorithms should be interpretable and explainable, and if possible, end-users should be able to have choices to adjust the parameters of the algorithms that lead to their personalised recommendations.
• Data privacy &  data ownership: private data should remain private.

In a nutshell, we prioritize projects that use Tech4Good. In our opinion, this resonates well with recent initiatives at the EU-level (AI4EU) and the Dutch national level (NL AI Coalition).

We hope this short summary has provided you with some idea of our goals and purpose with Lucidminds.

What are the services we offer?

• We are professional software developers, computer scientists, and computational economists.
• We can offer/promise a professional service at modelling, implementing and delivering agent-based models, expertise in machine learning and data science, as well as big data architectures.
• We can join any R&D grant application as an SME, for instance in Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in projects.
• We can offer Seminars & Workshops on themes related to AI and ABM Simulation.
• We can offer internships for Master and PhD students.

Areas of expertise:

• Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation
• Big Data Architectures, Engineering and Analysis
  
• Blockchain and Smart Contracts
  
• Machine Learning
  
• Natural Language Processing
  

Why should you collaborate with us?

• We can offer a long-term relationship and stable support for software development.
• Post-Docs, PhD students or other researchers can work with us, we can have internships, short-term employment, or project work.
  
• Collaborating with a commercial partner can provide academia with an argument that ABM is a mature technique, with commercial applications.

What we ask from our academic partners:

• If your project requires any of the highly specialized skills and expertise mentioned above, we would appreciate it very much to hear from you.
• If you hear from other people who have such needs, a referral to us would be very nice.
  
• If you support our goals, we would like to start a conversation with you and ask for your help to improve the socially responsible use of AI technology, including simulation technology.

How to get in touch:

• Through our website: www.lucidminds.ai
• Through email: [log in to unmask]
  

We wish you a great day, and thank you for your attention!

Bulent Ozel | CEO @ Lucidminds
Oghuzan Yayla | CTO @ Lucidminds
Sander van der Hoog | Head of Simulation @ Lucidminds