Data Science Institute

We aim to set the global standard for a truly interdisciplinary approach to contemporary data-driven research challenges. Established in 2015, the Data Science Institute (DSI) has over 300 members and has raised £50 million in research grants.

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10-year anniversary of DSI – “Decade of Data Science”

In 2025, the Data Science Institute (DSI) at Lancaster University proudly marks its 10th anniversary. Since its founding in 2015, the DSI has established itself as a leading hub for cutting-edge research, interdisciplinary collaboration, and real-world impact in data science and artificial intelligence. Over the past decade, our researchers and partners have tackled some of the most pressing challenges in society, science, and industry—advancing the foundations of data science, fostering ethical and trustworthy AI, driving innovation across sectors and training 100s of data science practitioners.

As we celebrate this milestone, we reflect on the achievements of our vibrant research community and the transformative projects that have shaped the field. Looking ahead, the DSI remains committed to pushing the boundaries of data science and AI research, strengthening global collaborations, and supporting the next generation of data scientists.

About us

We are working to create a world-class Data Science Institute at Lancaster (DSI@Lancaster) that sets the global standard for a truly interdisciplinary approach to contemporary data-driven research challenges. DSI@Lancaster aims to have an internationally recognised and distinctive strength in being able to provide an end-to-end interdisciplinary research capability - from infrastructure and fundamentals through to globally relevant problem domains and the social, legal and ethical issues raised by the use of Data Science.

The Institute is initially focusing on the fundamentals of Data Science including security and privacy together with cross-cutting theme areas consisting of environment, resilience and sustainability;health and ageing, data and society and creating a world-leading institute with over 300 affiliated academics, researchers, and students.

Our data science, health data science and business analytics programmes have launched the careers of hundreds of data professionals over the last 10 years. Students from our programmes have progressed to data science roles at Amazon, PWC, Ernst & Young, Hawaiian Airlines, eBay, Zurich Insurance, the Co-operative Group, N Brown, the NHS and many others - please look at our Education pages for further details of the courses on offer.

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New Workshop Page

We have a new current workshop page - please do take a look - full information on these workshops and sign up opportunities can be found.

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Data Dialogues - 12 -1pm in Sky Lounge, Infolab

Data Dialogues is an informal, discussion-driven event where members of the DSI and the broader university community share insights into their work, spark interdisciplinary conversations and explore potential collaborations. The focus is on interactive engagement rather than formal presentations—so no slides (or just a few, if needed)! Instead, the idea is to introduce your work in an accessible way, followed by an open discussion and Q&A with attendees.

Bring your lunch and come to the Sky Lounge to hear more about some of the exciting developments in Data Science and AI going on in the university. Get fresh perspectives and think about new ways of approaching your own research, meet new people and explore potential research collaborations. Come be part of the DSI community!

  • 9 April - Henry Moss (School of Mathematical Sciences) - Accelerating Scientific Discovery in the Age of AI
  • 16 April - Alex Bush, Cassio Nunes and Oliver Metcalf (LEC) - Confidence and Misclassification in Automated ML in ecology: challenges of scaling
  • 30 April - Naveed Iqbal, MD – CEO at Triton Health - Supporting Intellectual Disability with AI
  • 7 May - Jun Liu (Digital Health, SCC) - Robust and Trustworthy Vision and Learning
  • 21 May - Luigi Sedda (CHICAS) - Noise, a source of information for disease surveillance
  • 28 May - Nathan Jones - Cultivate: Culture Innovation on Digital and Place and James Quinn Temporalised space/Spatialised Time (LICA)
  • 4 June - Leonardo De Sousa Miranda (LEC)
  • 18 June - Georgina Brown (Forensic Linguistics)

If you would like to present in the 25/26 season please get in touch.

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Latest News

Katherine Richardson (University of Copenhagen) Planetary Boundaries: A tool to guide management of Human-Earth interactions - 2nd May

The climate and biodiversity witness that our societies cannot continue to flourish unless we actively manage our relationship with the Earth and its resources. Such management requires guardrails to identify how much perturbation of critical Earth system processes is “too much”. The planetary boundaries framework, first introduced in 2009, and since twice updated, identifies science-based limits for human perturbation of Earth system processes. The most recent update shows that 6 of 9 boundaries are transgressed and that transgression is increasing. It also shows, however, that human perturbation of the ozone layer – a boundary transgressed or nearly transgressed in the 1900s - is now in back within a “safe operating space”. The framework and how it can be used for management of the Human-Earth relationship are presented here.

2nd May at 1.30 in the Management School - LT3 - 1.30 - 3pm

Sign up via Eventbrite

Biography

Katherine Richardson is a professor in biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen and, for more than 3 decades, has actively contributed to the development of Earth system science. She is one of the main architects behind the “planetary boundaries” and led the 2023 update that now has been downloaded over half a million times. She is extremely active at the science-policy and science-society interfaces and chaired the Commission that produced a plan for how Denmark can be independent of fossil fuels. She was a member of the Independent Group of Scientists that prepared the 2019 UN Global Sustainable Development Report and currently chairs the High-level EU Expert group on the economic and societal impact of research and innovation (ESIR). In Feb 2025, Katherine was awarded the prestigious Planet Earth Award for her decades of groundbreaking environmental research and commitment to bridging science and policy.

Lecture: Distant Viewing and the Multimodal Turn - 21st May 3.15-5pm

Management School – Lecture Theatre 3

Lauren Tilton and Taylor Arnold, University of Richmond

How do computers view? How can we harness AI to view images at scale?

Distant viewing offers a theory and method for the large-scale analysis of images using computer vision. This talk will introduce the concept and then turn to specific AI methods for the analysis of images. We will then turn to how distant viewing can support multimodal analysis, specifically looking at multimodal large language models.

Sign up for the Distant Viewing and the Multimodal Turn via Eventbrite

Learn more about Tilton and Arnold’s work:

Workshop: Distant Viewing Explorer - 20th May 10am-12pm

Led by Lauren Tilton abd& Taylor Arnold, University of Richmond

Charles Carter - A15 Seminar Room

Register for Distant Viewing Explorer workshop

This workshop will focus on DV Explorer (distantviewing.org/dvexplorer), which introduces the ways computer vision and related-AI technologies can support the analysis of images. We will end with how one can scale up their analysis using DVScripts (distantviewing.org/dvscripts), a guide to using python for distant viewing.

'Speculative Machines and Us: Histories and Futures of AI’ with the Centre for Science Studies and the British Academy on Thursday 17th July 2025.

Event details

Date: Thursday July 17th

Times: 10am – 5pm, BST

Location: A36, LICA Building, Lancaster University

Register via Eventbrite no later than 10th July 2025.

The event is organised by the Centre for Science Studies in collaboration with ImaginationLancaster and the Data Science Institute at Lancaster University, and is funded by the British Academy as part of Carolyn Pedwell’s Mid-Career Fellowship: ‘Speculative Machines and Us: The Making of Computational Cultures’ (2024-25).

Full information can be found here

Keynote speaker

  • Prof. Orit Halpern (Technische Universität Dresden)

Contributors

  • Dr Aleena Chia (Goldsmiths, University of London)
  • Dr Beatrice Fazi (University of Sussex)
  • Prof Charlie Gere (Lancaster University)
  • Dr Rolien Hoyng (Lancaster University)
  • Dr Nathan Jones (Lancaster University)
  • Prof. Carolyn Pedwell (Lancaster University)

Speculative Machines and Us: Histories and Futures of AI

The term ‘speculative machines’ references Alan Turing’s ‘universal machine’ (1936), yet it also indexes the speculative operations of emerging forms of generative AI. This one-day symposium will explore transnational genealogies of artificial intelligence and ‘the digital’ and consider how and why they matter to present and future AI imaginaries, research, and technologies – and their associated promises, threats, and potentialities. Event contributors are invited to trace backwards from the current focus on, and hype around, pre-trained transformer models and other machine learning technologies to re-engage past or alternative incarnations of AI and digital computing (i.e. cybernetics, post-war neural network research, logic-based and symbolic processing AI, early machine learning, “nouvelle AI” and robotics etc.) and their affective, cultural, socio-technical, political, economic, and ecological particularities, problematics, and, perhaps, ‘undetonated potential’ (Freeman, 2010). How were past visions of digital mediation linked to changing accounts of human sense perception and an ‘aesthetic infrastructure of sensorial training’ (Halpern, 2014: 15) – and with what contemporary resonances, impacts, or provocations?

Amid the increasing entanglement of data analytics, Big Tech, political authoritarianism, ecological extractivism, and neocolonial “common sense”, symposium participants may also wish to speculate on the biopolitical and geopolitical futures of generative AI – and their epistemological, ethical, and environmental implications. If our digital past(s) are not fixed or ‘lost’ but rather a ‘space for potential’ (Chun, 2021: 224), what alternative paths and possibilities for human-machine relations might such temporal experiments and explorations open up or activate? How might the afterlives of earlier forms of digital technology and mediation offer a rich archive from which to collaboratively intuit, design, refuse, or fabulate AI futures? Exploring these interdisciplinary themes and questions might include critical and creative engagement with media and cultural theory, science and technology studies, speculative design, computer science, informatics, human-computer interaction, critical data studies, digital humanities, media history, digital arts, digital archive studies, digital sociology and geography, and other relevant fields.

Speculative Machines and Us is funded by the British Academy, with support from the Centre for Science Studies, the Data Science Institute and ImaginationLancaster.

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Research Themes

Data Science at Lancaster was founded in 2015 on Lancaster’s historic research strengths in Computer Science, Statistics and Operational Research. The environment is further enriched by a broad community of data-driven researchers in a variety of other disciplines including the environmental sciences, health and medicine, sociology and the creative arts.

  • Foundations

    Foundations research sits at the interface of methods and application: with an aim to develop novel methodology inspired by the real-world challenge. These could be studies about the transportation of people, goods & services, energy consumption and the impact of changes to global weather patterns.

  • Health

    The Health theme has a wide scope. Current areas of strength include spatial and spatiotemporal methods in global public health, design and analysis of clinical trials, epidemic forecasting and demographic modelling, health informatics and genetics.

  • Society

    Data Science has brought new approaches to understanding long-standing social problems concerning energy use, climate change, crime, migration, the knowledge economy, ecologies of media, design and communication in everyday life, or the distribution of wealth in financialised economies.

  • Environment

    The focus of the environment theme has been to seek methodological innovations that can transform our understanding and management of the natural environment. Data Science will help us understand how the environment has evolved to its current state and how it might change in the future.

  • Data Engineering

    The Data Engineering theme aims to explore how we can utilise digital technologies to accelerate and enhance our research processes across the University.

Research Software Engineering

Within the Data Science Institute, our aim is to improve the reproducibility and replicability of research by improving the reusability, sustainability and quality of research software developed across the University. We are currently funded by the N8CIR, and work closely with our partner institutions across N8 Research.

Research Software Engineering

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