Synopsis

The availability of data, in many forms, offers the opportunity to tackle research problems in ways that were not previously possible. Data driven science is not in itself new but the digital era has meant for some disciplines unprecedented amounts of data. Making sense of such data and ensuring appropriate social and ethical considerations brings interesting challenges that are being tackled in novel ways in Oxford at the Big Data Institute at the Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery, the Oxford-Nie Financial Big Data Lab and other laboratories across the University.

Professor Trefethen will provide an overview of how institutions, researchers and educators at Oxford are meeting these challenges and using big data to enabling scientific discovery in new ways.

About the speaker

Professor Anne E. Trefethen is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (PVC) of the Museums, Libraries and Botanic Gardens and Chief Information Officer for the University.   She is Professor of Scientific Computing and former director of the Oxford e-Research Centre.

Professor Trefethen’s academic career has been focused on high-performance numerical algorithms and large-scale scientific applications.  She has contributed to the fields of parallel numerical algorithms, software design and engineering and most recently to energy-aware algorithms.

Professor Trefethen has been the Chief Information Officer for four years and during that time led a significant organisational change in creating a single central IT department, developing a University strategic plan and capital plan to support it.   She has been a PVC for two years and took on the portfolio of Gardens, Libraries and Museums one year ago. She joined Oxford University in 2005 to set up an interdisciplinary research centre – the Oxford e-Research Centre – to facilitate interdisciplinary IT-enabled research. Before joining Oxford she was Director of the UK e-Science Core Programme, having been the Deputy Director for four years based in EPSRC and working closely with what was then the Department of Trade and Industry. The Core Programme focused on the generic issues for collaborative IT enabled research applications and the development of research infrastructure in collaboration with UK industry.

Professor Trefethen has also worked in industry, where she has led the design and development of software products at Thinking Machines Corporation in the USA and NAG Ltd in the UK.