Big Data: Risks and Scientific Opportunities

What is scientifically possible in the collection and use of big data, and how does it impact citizens? How will it be used over the next 10 years? What role do European academic centres play in collecting, processing and researching big data? Given the rapidly evolving field of big data and its essentially interdisciplinary nature, are the structures of universities and of public funders sufficiently flexible to respond to the needs and demands of the field?

The Guild Policy Lab on big data brings together some of our leading scientists who have worked on its risks and scientific opportunities:
 

"Customer Intelligence: The Next Frontier"

Prof. Dirk Van den Poel, Ghent University

Dirk Van Den Poel is a professor of Data Analytics and Big Data at Ghent University, where he specialises in Big Data, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and data mining. He has completed several projects in the field of customer intelligence for many international companies such as Dunnhumby (UK), Metro Group (Germany), Technicolor and Proximus. Lately, his research interests extended into analysing sensor data.

 

“Trade-offs between technology and political economy of Big Data for Urban Informatics”

Prof. Vonu Thakuriah, University of Glasgow

Vonu Thakuriah is the founding Director and Principal Investigator of the Urban Big Data Centre funded by UK's Economic and Social Research Council. The centre includes a national data service to inspire innovations for sustainable and socially just cities. She is interested in the analytics of emerging sources of Big Data to understand complex urban problems. This includes the technological, methodological, epistemological and political economy challenges related to working with Big Data.

 

"Big Data for Health"

Prof. Jaak Vilo, University of Tartu

Jaak Vilo is Head of the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Tartu, where he leads the Bioinformatics and Data Science area. He is also a head of node of Estonia in the European ESFRI bioinformatics infrastructure ELIXIR. ELIXIR is responsible for managing data, standards, compute and training infrastructure for life sciences in Europe.

 

Respondent:

René Von Schomberg, Team Leader Open Science Policy Coordination and Development, European Commission 

 

Moderator:

Prof. Jan Palmowski, Secretary General of the Guild


 

 

 

Published Mar. 27, 2017 4:03 PM - Last modified July 17, 2017 5:07 PM