The Data Science Institute is built on tripartite foundations of operational research, computer science and statistics, each of which has a long-standing internationally recognised track record at Lancaster.

Our fundamental research in all three disciplines has always been driven by its relevance to real-world problems, and we carry out world-class research across the spectrum of research topics in these areas. Lancaster scientists are particularly well known for expertise in vehicle routing and scheduling, particularly of air traffic, and in applied optimisation work including bandit algorithms and the sequential control of stochastic systems.

We have a globally-leading research group on extreme value statistics, especially with environmental applications, and have developed significant technologies for detecting and responding to change points in data. Our expertise in computational data analysis, particularly for streaming data and forecasting, is distributed across all three disciplines. These analytical methods complement Lancaster's recognised expertise in mobile systems, pervasive and self-calibrating sensing technologies, and infrastructure to gather diverse data and process it in real-time distributed systems.

The Foundations theme will blend the skills of researchers in these areas, bringing together agile teams to address challenges arising from applications, both within the Institute and externally.