LIDA: Our year in review 2019/20

On 11th July, LIDA celebrated 5 years as a physical institute since opening its doors in 2015.  It’s a shame that there won’t have been many people in the building to mark the occasion, and we are sure that many of you will be looking forward along with us to that time when we can begin to assemble once more as a community.  Notwithstanding the considerable inconvenience of our current working situation, it is pleasing to reflect that the pandemic has had little or no effect in diluting the vibrancy of LIDA’s research, or the continued steady growth in our portfolio.  We are confident that this will be clear to all of our readers from the contents of this Annual Review.

We are especially gratified by the inclusion of case studies reflecting joint work with our research partners in Artificial Intelligence and Immersive Technologies.  AI continues to represent a huge opportunity which is intimately connected to the science and analytics of data, as David Hogg explains in his contribution to this report.  It is hard to see AI as anything but a lynchpin of future growth in the economy and society, and in the pursuit of science and academic innovation, in the next twenty years.  LIDA is committed to doing all that we can to foster increased capacity and capability for the University and its partners in this key domain.  The last year has also seen the launch of the Centre for Immersive Technology (CfIT) as a new unit within the University, with widespread strategic support for the emergence of an outstanding and distinctive contribution into both research and teaching across the institution.

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In a tumultuous year LIDA researchers can be proud of how they have responded to the crisis, acting quickly to meet the emerging needs of our partners while simultaneously juggling challenging home lives. Across our three programmes of research – in Urban Analytics, Health, and Artificial Intelligence – we have seen impactful contributions to alleviating the crisis, that have ultimately benefited our response to the pandemic.

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The current academic year has started like no other.  There has been a huge effort by the LIDA community to transition the existing education and training portfolio from its thriving campus norm to online delivery.  But what preceded this was a very successful 2019/20.

The 2019/20 academic year saw a growth across all core areas of activity within the LIDA education and training portfolio, these included taught postgraduate programmes and student numbers, short course provision, early career seminars and the ongoing development of future initiatives.

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The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions, and the REF outcomes affect universities’ reputations and about £2 billion per year of research funding. LIDA was established in 2014, so this report I reflect on the ways in which LIDA’s research technology has underpinned the University’s data analytics research in the REF2021 period (1/8/13 – 31/7/20).

Research technology comprises hardware, software and wetware. In terms of hardware, LIDA provides the University’s only ISO27001-accredited IT platform (the Integrated Research Campus; IRC), which is mandated by some data providers we work with, and without which some 57 research projects could not have taken place. Included within those are eight projects where researchers use the IRC within LIDA’s three physical Safe Rooms to conduct research with Identifiable sensitive personal data, data with high commercial/research sensitivity, or other high-risk data.

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We believe in innovation through collaboration. During 2019/20 we worked closely with a wide range of data partners in the public, private and third sectors to ensure the Institute’s academic expertise is channelled towards addressing real-world challenges.

Below are some of the highlights from 2019/2020.