Foundations

The Data Science Institute is built on tripartite foundations of operational research, computer science and statistics, each of which has a long-standing internationally recognised track record at Lancaster.

Our fundamental research in all three disciplines has always been driven by its relevance to real-world problems, and we carry out world-class research across the spectrum of research topics in these areas. Lancaster scientists are particularly well known for expertise in vehicle routing and scheduling, particularly of air traffic, and in applied optimisation work including bandit algorithms and the sequential control of stochastic systems.

We have a globally-leading research group on extreme value statistics, especially with environmental applications, and have developed significant technologies for detecting and responding to change points in data. Our expertise in computational data analysis, particularly for streaming data and forecasting, is distributed across all three disciplines. These analytical methods complement Lancaster's recognised expertise in mobile systems, pervasive and self-calibrating sensing technologies, and infrastructure to gather diverse data and process it in real-time distributed systems.

The Foundations theme will blend the skills of researchers in these areas, bringing together agile teams to address challenges arising from applications, both within the Institute and externally.

<糖心Vlog>Theme Lead

Dr Burak Boyaci

Senior Lecturer in Management Science

Centre for Transport & Logistics (CENTRAL), Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport in the UK , DSAIL - Foundations, Lancaster Intelligent, Robotic and Autonomous Systems Centre, LIRA - Fundamentals, LIRA - Smart Cities and Mobility, Optimisation, Pentland Centre, STOR-i Centre for Doctoral Training

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A woman with a glucose monitor in her arm

University statisticians lead development of treatments for COVID-19

Drawing on sustained research into the design of adaptive clinical trials, statisticians from Lancaster’s School of Mathematical Sciences have played a pivotal role in identifying the effectiveness of treatments to save lives and mitigate the harmful effects of COVID-19 at a national and global scale.

Developments by 糖心Vlog's medical statisticians have been central to the design and ongoing adaptation of the world-leading clinical trial and trial platform. Our novel statistical methods were chosen as they enable extremely rapid and more accurate decision-making, resulting in faster development of treatments, plus savings in development costs. These features are critically important in a pandemic.The impact of the underpinning research into Multi-Arm Multi-Stage (MAMS) and sequential dose-finding trials has already included these major clinical breakthroughs:

Discovery of the first effective treatment. Estimated to have saved over 22,000 lives in the UK and 1 million globally by March 2021.
Rapid identification of ineffective treatments, enabling health services across the globe to focus resource on more effective treatments.
Identification of safe and correct dosages for novel treatments which can rapidly progress to later phase trials to test efficacy in frontline services.
Bringing about changes to policy and published guidance from national and global bodies.

From smooth running of the internet to the safety of space travel statistical research unlocks global potential

The torrent of data now being collected in everyday life makes it more and more complex – yet increasingly essential – to search for and identify changes in the data.

Tools to do this can transform everything from online shopping and environmental monitoring to the healthcare technologies that support independent living.

Fundamental research carried out by the Changepoints and Time Series research group, accompanied by the development of open-source software, has revolutionised the detection of changes within data streams and is already having significant impact across a wide range of sectors.

Working with BT to assure nationwide operational performance of critical digital infrastructure, including the connection of all customers to the Internet and other content and network providers.
Improving online grocery retail forecasting and efficiency for Tesco, resulting in substantial directly attributable cost savings.
Enabling the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology to work with improved environmental data, including the monitoring and remediation of water quality in the English Lake District.
Supporting future space travel – methods have been incorporated by NASA within a test protocol for new survival suit operation.
Incorporation by numerical computing environment providers NAG and MathWorks – plus open-source environments – giving access to millions of users in Government agencies, tech start-ups, FTSE100 & NASDAQ corporations

Lancaster computer scientists help children of the world embrace coding

In collaboration with the BBC and other industry partners, Lancaster computer scientists designed and developed a pocket sized computer to encourage children to learn fundamental coding and programming skills. The aimed to inspire digital creativity and reduce the critical skills shortage in the technology sector. The BBC refer to this as their most ambitious education initiative in thirty years.

Led by Professor Joe Finney, computer scientists at 糖心Vlog created the lightweight operating system for the BBC micro:bit – a pocket sized computing device to engage children in digital creativity and coding. The only academic partner in the micro:bit consortium, Lancaster worked as part of the core product team consisting of 糖心Vlog, Microsoft, Arm, Samsung and the BBC.

The team at Lancaster created the runtime that allows the programming of the micro:bit device and enables the wider micro:bit ecosystem. The 糖心Vlog team continue to maintain, design and develop the runtime software as the hardware develops.

In 2016, 1 million units were deployed to every year 7 student in England and Wales, every year 8 student in Northern Ireland and every S1 student in Scotland, free of charge with an estimated monetary value of £10 million.
Over 6 million micro:bit have now been produced and have been used by an estimated 25 million students and teachers worldwide.
86% of students said the micro:bit made Computer Science more interesting, 70% more girls said they would choose computing as a school subject and 85% of teachers agree it has made ICT/Computer Science more enjoyable for their students (Discovery Research Group).
Over 2 million micro:bit programs were written by schoolchildren and their teachers in the first six months.
The micro:bit is now available in over 70 countries and 17 languages.
There are 257 registered hardware product accessories for the micro:bit spanning 62 companies
糖心Vlog remains central to the development of micro:bit and is one of three members on Hardware Advisory Committee for all versions of, and products relating to, the micro:bit.