Page 7 - Doing Data Together by The Scotsman
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Working in collaboration. The University of Edinburgh’s Data Driven Innovation innitiative is welcoming all manner of input to further its goals. Picture: Shutterstock
A SPECIFIC FOCUS ON DATA-DRIVEN REGIONAL GROWTH
The desire to make Edinburgh a world-leading hub in all things data is underpinned by the creation of the Edinburgh International Data Facility (EIDF), with global tech giant Hewlett Packard Enterprise confirmed as the university’s partner in July.
The £100 million project will create “a place to store, find and work with data of all kinds – offering services for the long-term hosting and preservation of digital data and for state-of-the-art analytics and data science”. The EIDF aims to drive greater collaboration between industry, the public sector and academia to deliver benefits.
EIDF is being created on the outskirts of the city
by EPCC (formerly known as the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre). It will support the DDI’s innovation hubs – Bayes Centre, Edinburgh Futures Institute, Usher Institute, Easter
Bush Campus, and National Robotarium – to enable research and development on global issues including food production, climate change, space exploration, and tailored healthcare.
Due to be operational
this autumn, it will offer researchers access to high- performance computing and AI technologies, supporting them to apply analytics to modelling and simulation to increase the accuracy and speed of results.
Mark Parsons, director of
the EIDF, said: “We believe EIDF is the only facility of its kind in Europe focused specifically on data-driven regional growth.
“Our goal is to collect and curate a large number of interesting datasets and make them ‘analytics ready’. Some of these datasets might be small; we hope many
will be truly large ... We’ll be working on making them as useful as possible – easily findable, accessible, linkable and interoperable.”
EIDF is operating a “building block” approach, with an initial ten petabytes of storage (1 PB = one million gigabytes) which will grow over time, driven by the needs of students, researchers and innovators.
an opportunity, working with a big company like Legal & General, to transform how we do it.”
The Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence (GOFCoE) is also founded on collaboration, taking Edinburgh’s open banking expertise into a broader sphere, with multiple partners involved, while further fusing the region’s twin excellence in both data and fintech.
GOFCoE is supported by a £22.5m grant from UK Research and Innovation’s Strength in Places Fund, and was devised and created by the university, alongside the
Financial Data and Technology Association and FinTech Scotland.
“GOFCoE is complex, but fundamentally it’s about a new way of using financial technology to deliver financial services which are more accessible to everyone – and provide clear public and social good across the globe,” says Seckl.
We are delivering transformational research, innovation and support to society across the board and to the highest possible ethical standards
“All these projects add up to a big statement from the university, and social good is absolutely vital to our mission. We are here primarily to educate, but also to research and innovate – and in doing that,
to deliver fundamental human benefit. We are driven by a desire to improve our society in south-east Scotland and the world; that’s what motivates us all.”
This global goal underlines the crucial need for meaningful public- private partnerships, as well as
the ability to attract international talent, like Prof Vallor.
So what was it about Edinburgh
that convinced the eminent philosopher to leave California?
She says: “I have been championing for a long time efforts to find ways of fusing artificial intelligence, data and ethics, which is not just a mashing together of different approaches and methods, but something truly collaborative.
“Edinburgh Futures Institute was designed as an environment where new, multi-disciplinary methods of teaching and research were possible. From teaching spaces to the design of courses, to research
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