Using data to drive research
Leeds Institute of Data Analytics (LIDA) reports on their successful year.
LIDA works alongside researchers in all faculties to support their work through data analysis, artificial intelligence and technological innovation.
It brings together over 400 researchers and data scientists from all disciplines to ensure that data is a part of the University’s world-changing research.
This year, LIDA has supported 68 research projects, from healthcare to sociology to environmental science.
Read LIDA’s Annual Showcase 2023.
Data to support environmental science
LIDA supports environmental scientists to utilise data effectively. This year, some of their top collaborations have involved using machine learning and artificial intelligence to predict and measure environmental activity, its impact on society and how the world can respond to it.
Three of these projects are:
- Detecting signs of volcanic unrest from space with Professor Andy Hooper and Dr Matthew Gaddes
- Measuring the Earth’s interior with physics-informed neural networks with Yunpeng Chen, Dr Sjoerd AL de Ridder and Professor Sebastian Rost
- Short-term weather forecasting with the Met Office.
In the School of Food Science and Nutrition, Madeleine Thomas, Professor Michelle Morris and Professor Bernadette Moore worked with colleagues at Sainsbury’s to boost low-income families’ fresh produce choices.
Partnerships, events and training
LIDA has partnerships with The Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC), N8, the NHS, supermarkets and more.
A team at the CDRC recently won an award for their impactful collaborations with supermarkets. They used data from major retailers to test interventions that promote healthy and sustainable diets.
LIDA is a trusted partner because of its Trusted Research Environment, called Leeds Analytic Secure Environment for Research (LASER), which ensures that internal and external teams can collaborate on sensitive data safely. Researchers have end-to-end project support from the in-house Data Analytics Team.
This year, LIDA has run over 40 events including, workshops and hackathons, to support collaboration across the University and externally. Their Environment Scientific Machine Learning events are on the LIDA YouTube channel.
Their research and training programmes include the topics of artificial intelligence, immersive technologies and data science infrastructures.
