The Alan Turing Institute is receiving £X million in EPSRC funding for 2022/23 to transform itself from a university-centred research hub into a more open, national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. This matters because the UK lacks a single, coordinated national body to steer AI and data science research, training, and public debate. Since its launch in 2015, the Institute has grown to host over 500 researchers and built partnerships with industry, government, and the third sector. But its current model limits how widely its expertise can be shared. The additional funding allows the Institute to build the foundations of "Turing 2.0" — a more accessible national resource. If successful, the Institute could become the central hub of a UKRI National AI Programme. That would mean better coordination of AI research across universities, stronger links with industry to turn discoveries into real-world products, and a louder voice in public conversations about how algorithms affect everyday life. The work is applied by design: the Institute's goal is to drive economic impact and societal good, not to pursue fundamental science for its own sake.
View original technical description
The Alan Turing Institute, as the UK's national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, plays an important part in driving forward advances in these technologies in order to change the world for the better. The Institute is named in honour of Alan Turing, whose pioneering work in theoretical and applied mathematics, engineering and computing is considered to have laid the foundations for modern-day data science and artificial intelligence. The Institute's goals are to undertake world-class research, apply its research to real-world problems, driving economic impact and societal good, lead the training of a new generation of scientists, and shape the public conversation around data and algorithms. After launching in 2015 with government funding from EPSRC and five founding universities, the Institute has grown an extensive network of university partners from across the UK and launched a number of major partnerships with industry, public and third sector. Today it is home to more than 500 researchers, a rapidly growing team of in house research software engineers and data scientists and a business team. Following its initial phase of funding, EPSRC provided a short-term commitment to ensure the continuity of core activity in the current model. Since then, EPSRC has been working with the Institute, and across UKRI, to develop the Institute's role at the centre of a potential UKRI National AI Programme. As part of the transition into this role, EPSRC are providing additional funding in 2022/23 to allow the Institute to build the foundations of Turing 2.0 and invest in activities that support the evolution of the Turing to a more open, national Institute in data science and AI.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know