Data: Transforming Science and Society

Data is the currency of the digital age and has transformed all areas of physical life and social sciences. In all disciplines there has been an unparalleled growth in the quantity and variety of data made available by the pervasive nature of the internet and enabled by almost free digital storage.”  That is, could we removed the text “driven by new media and communications, by new sensors and observational data.

Moving beyond the expectations of ‘big data’ the focus is now on development of sophisticated and nuanced transformational data-driven ideas and algorithms.

Have we reached a tipping point where new approaches to complex systems, personal health, social policy and understanding our earth can now be understood with sophisticated and nuanced data-driven discovery?

What are the next fruitful steps for bringing together disparate data for applications that benefit individuals, business and our society?

The University of Sydney’s new Centre for Translational Data Science is driving new and transformational advances in research through the application of data and machine-learning technologies. 

The Centre is also supporting and building substantial new human capacity through teaching data science as a translational methodology and training a new generation of scientists.

SPEAKERS:

Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte (panel chair) is the Director of the Centre for Translational Data Science at the University of Sydney, an ARC Federation Fellow and the 2010 NSW Scientist of the Year. From 2010-2014, he was CEO of National ICT Australia (NICTA), and from 1995-2010 Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems and of the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR).

Professor Dietmar Müller is Professor of Geophysics, School of Geosciences in the Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney. His research has focused on understanding Earth processes by merging conventional geological and geophysical data with advanced kinematic and dynamic models. Dietmar’s EarthByte research group is known for pursuing open innovation, involving the collaborative development of open-source software as well as global digital data sets made available under a creative commons license.

Professor Nicholas Glozier and Professor Sally Wood have been working together to investigate the links between psychosocial, psychological and environmental factors as predictors of employment, education and training outcomes. Professor Glozier is a consultant psychiatrist specialising in epidemiology, clinical trials and health services research. In particular he focuses upon the links between mental health and physical conditions, in particular sleep and neurological disorders, and how the interplay with the changing psychosocial and technological environment leads to work related disability, stress, stigma and discrimination. Professor Wood, from the Sydney Business School, is an ARC Future Fellow (2014-2018) with expertise in Bayesian statistical modeling of longitudinal and panel data, spectral analysis and mixture models for time series. Her applied work includes modeling cognitive development and voltage fluctuations obtained from an intracranial electroencephalogram (IEEG), and research into criminology, and psychological and social predictors of engagement in employment.

Dr Sean Humphrey is a Senior Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Charles Perkins Centre, the University of Sydney's multi-disciplinary research centre for obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease and their related conditions. He has developed technologies for analysing proteins and their modifications and is applying these methods to study cellular communication in diseased biological system networks.

This event is presented by Sydney Ideas at the University of Sydney