University to develop major big data centre
A YORKSHIRE university has won two grants worth almost £11m that will allow it to become a national centre for ‘big data’.
The research carried out by the University of Leeds will lead to unprecedented new insights into society, business and health in the UK.
Those leading the project have hailed it as “transformational” for the region.
The grants, announced yesterday by Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts at the High Performance Computing and Big Data conference in London, were awarded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC).
Sir Alan Langlands, vice-chancellor of the University of Leeds, said: “These awards provide a real opportunity for Leeds to establish a leading centre in data analytics which will have clear patient benefits, high social and economic impact and real international reach. The investments from the MRC and ESRC provide an excellent platform for the future.”
The funding is part of the Government’s support for research that can drive economic growth. Big Data analysis has been identified by ministers as one of “eight great technologies” in which the UK is internationally competitive.
Professor Martin Clarke of the University of Leeds, deputy director of the Consumer Data Research Centre, said: “This project is transformational for the university, the city and the region.”
David Willetts said: “Making the most of large and complex data is a huge priority for Government as it has the potential to drive research and development, increase productivity and innovation and ultimately transform lives.”
The University of Leeds has been awarded £5.8 million from the MRC and, although the final details are still being negotiated, a further grant of approximately £5 million from the ESRC.
The ESRC grant will be used to establish a new Master’s course in Geography and Business, which will help address national skill shortages in Big Data analysis, and will fund a Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) that is jointly hosted by the University of Leeds and University College London.
The CDRC will be a national resource that will make data, routinely collected by business and local government organisations, accessible for academics in order to undertake important research in the social sciences to inform policy development, implementation and evaluation.
At Leeds, this data analysis will span a wide range of topics, including research into controlling the spread of epidemics and improving network transport planning. It could also help with other challenges, such as mapping ethical consumer trends and tracing relationships between shopping habits and health outcomes.
Professor Mark Birkin of the University of Leeds’ School of Geography, who will lead the ESRC project, said: “The modern consumer environment is producing vast amounts of data that we are only just starting to get to grips with. These data sets can contain enormous volumes of information that, if analysed and studied in the right way, will offer valuable insights into our society.”
Professor Jeremy Wyatt, Professor of Health Informatics at the University of Leeds, said: “As well as the obvious boost to medical bioinformatics research in Leeds, the coincidence of both ESRC and MRC funding for research around consumer behaviour, health and genomics opens up unprecedented opportunities to understand the impact of human behaviour on health, and vice versa.”
Thirteen companies, including several major high street names, gave letters of support for the University of Leeds bid and the first phases of the project will be securing agreements to access the anonymised consumer data and building the infrastructure to hold it safely.
