The Alan Turing Institute has announced the appointment of Professor Andrew Blake, currently Director of Microsoft Research Cambridge, as its first Director. Professor Blake will join the Institute in October. Along with the announcement of its new Director the Institute has marked its first few days of operations with the confirmation of £10 million of research funding from Lloyd’s Register Foundation, a research partnership with GCHQ, a collaboration with Cray Inc. and EPSRC, and its first research activities.
The Institute is a joint venture between, the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, UCL, Warwick and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and has its headquarters at the British Library. The Institute is being funded over five years with £42 million from the UK government. The university partners are contributing £5 million each, totalling £25 million. In addition, the Institute is seeking to partner with other business and government bodies. The creation of the Institute has been coordinated by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
The Institute will promote the development and use of advanced mathematics, computer science, algorithms and big data for human benefit. Research work will begin this autumn with a series of data summits for commerce, industry and the physical and social sciences and scoping workshops for data and social scientists to inform and shape the Institute’s research agenda.
‘The Council for the Mathematical Sciences (CMS) welcomes the announcement of the appointment of the Alan Turing Institute’s first Director and the outline for the Institute’s future activities. Mathematical sciences underpin our 21st century technology, economy and society and the Institute will play a vital role in advancing areas of research that can provide opportunities across the entire mathematical sciences landscape’.