What is the DataLab?
The Data Lab is Scotland's innovation centre for data science
and AI, our mission is to maximise the value of data for Scotland
and to lead the world to a data powered future.
How long has it been around?
The Data Lab started in 2014 as part of a broader innovation
centre programme to help organisations (commercial and public
sector) in Scotland innovate by driving value from data. The
potential economic benefit to Scotland from the data opportunity is
estimated to be £20bn but we need to help organisations take
advantage of that opportunity.
What's been achieved to date?
Over the last 5 years, we have invested in over 110 projects,
helping organisations build new products or services or drive
operational efficiency and productivity by using novel data
science, machine learning and AI methods. We have built
an extensive skills and talent programme including sponsored MSc
programmes where we have supported 560 students to gain their MSc
in 26 different courses from MSc in Data Engineering, Data Science,
Machine Learning, AI and Speech analysis and many more. We pull the
MSc cohort together for meta skills training, innovation challenge
weeks and placements in Industry. We have funded over 25
Industrial Doctorates with industry partners and have built 12
online learning courses in the application of data science across
various industries.
We run Executive Education and have taken 1200 people through
this programme in the last 2 years. We have published school
lessons, plans and work for school teachers and children.
We run Scotland's annual DataFest; a festival showcasing data
innovation over 2 weeks every year, with over 4,000 participants
and 60+ events including StatWars a competition for school
children, a travelling data/art gallery bus, datathons, debates,
talent events and business events. We build international
relationships through our networks and take Scottish delegations to
relevant international conferences to showcase and talk about their
work.
We have run the Cancer Innovation Challenge for Scotland,
helping to improve patient outcomes and experiences through cancer
treatment with innovative data methods.
We have also launched the Data for Children Collaborative with
UNICEF to help solve problems for children in Scotland and
beyond.
What are your plans for the future?
We plan to continue our support of industry and the public
sector in Scotland; we are working with our networks to build
collaborations to solve important challenges, either in an
individual sector such as Health and Wellbeing or across
sectors. Our skills and talent work will continue to expand
with new opportunities offered to those in work at risk from
automation to learn new data skills, as well as building new MSc
programmes, continuous professional development and online
courses.
DataFest will continue to expand and provide a platform for
sharing the amazing data innovation happening in Scotland and
around the world.
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