Welcome from LIDA Director
It is a great pleasure to provide these introductory words for the first newsletter of the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics. LIDA (pronounced Lee-dah rather than Lie-dah – we aspire to become world-leading with data…) has been established as an Institute since the spring of 2014.
The Institute hosts two national Research Council Centres, in Medical Bioinformatics (funded by the Medical Research Council) and Consumer Research (funded by the Economic and Social Research Council). From these foundations we are now working with a growing team of associates from every Faculty in the University.
Our occupancy of dedicated and beautifully appointed space on Level 11 of the Worsley Building began in July 2015. Many of you will already be familiar with these premises having attended business meetings, academic seminars or perhaps training events here, while others will already be permanently resident alongside myself. If not, then I hope we will have the opportunity to welcome you soon.
I would like to share two further observations that I find particularly motivational....
EMPOWER Project
EMPOWER sets out to substantially reduce the use of conventionally fuelled vehicles (CFV) in cities and recognises that a change in driver behaviour is needed to improve urban traffic flows, increase air quality and reduce CO2 emissions and oil consumption.
Adopting a ‘reward rather than punishment’ approach, EMPOWER will explore the use of positive incentives delivered through smart phone technologies and the web to persuade people to make modest shifts in their transport choices.
Funded by the European Commission’s Horizon2020 programme, the project combines empirical research with practical implementation in four Living Lab Cities and seven Take-Up Cities and Communities.
Data Analytics and Society
The new ESRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Data Analysis and Society will provide postgraduate research and training for 52 PhD Students across four Universities (Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield & Manchester).
Led by the University of Leeds, the Centre will encourage significant advances which bring together social science with methods from computing, mathematics and the natural sciences.
There are a number of collaboration opportunities associated with the centre and we are seeking potential non-academic partners from all sectors with an interest in evidence based analytics of social systems.
Data Scientist Interns
The ‘digital skills shortage’ is a term that’s been around for a while and is often used to describe the challenge faced by employers when trying to recruit staff with specialist IT skills, such as Data Analysts and Data Scientists. Here at LIDA, we believe the best way to address this shortage is to build capacity by providing a range of training programmes and professional development courses.
As part of this commitment, we welcomed our first cohort of interns in September after a highly competitive recruitment process involving 128 applicants. The interns will be spending eight months here at LIDA and will work on projects ranging from understanding blood cancers, through monitoring hate crime via social media to agent-based modelling of smart cities (and everything in between)!
Leeds City Council
Working with external partners is a huge part of LIDA and one notable example is our strategic partnership with Leeds City Council.
Policy and Intelligence teams from across the Council have been working with LIDA on a range of projects affecting the city, from developing better understanding of flooding patterns to developing tools to better understand changes in social care needs.
This progressive thinking and the benefits it has delivered to the Council and the citizens of Leeds were recently acknowledged in a recent report by NESTA which highlighted those councils working at ‘the cutting edge of data-driven local government’.
Live@Leeds: Medical Bioinformatics Symposium
On 12th December 2016, LIDA’s Medical Bioinformatics MRC Centre hosted a symposium as part of the eMedLab series.
Attended by 90+ colleagues, the day comprised presentations from both Leeds staff and external speakers whose activities relate to the work of LIDA and the Medical Bioinformatics Centre.
If you missed it, you can view some of the presentations online.
LIDA Seminar Series
The LIDA Seminar Series, which was launched last year, has been extremely successful. We hosted 9 seminars in 2016, with over 640 attendees from a range of organisations.
The seminars, which take place each month at LIDA, have covered a wide range of topics including crime analytics, spatial disadvantage, sustainability and process analytics in healthcare.
The next seminar will be ' Acute and chronic childhood conditions' on Thursday 9 February.
Data Services Team
LIDA, including IT Services, have built a unique Data Services team, composed of Analyst, Development and Support specialists. The team support the delivery of leading edge research across a variety of areas.
We'd love to hear what you think of this first edition of the LIDA Newsletter, as well as any suggestions or stories for future editions.
Please send comments or suggestions to r.abbott@leeds.ac.uk
 |  |