New training ground to manage big, bad data

26 Aug 2020

A new technology training centre at The University of Queensland will harness the power of big data to improve productivity and workforce capacity in Australian businesses.

The new ARC Training Centre for Information Resilience (CIRES) will be led by UQ data science expert Professor Shazia Sadiq.

“Poor data management, resulting in ‘bad data’, is one of the biggest risk factors for emerging digital technologies like artificial intelligence and autonomous decision making,” Professor Sadiq said.

“It can result in lost business opportunities, reduced revenue and cybersecurity threats.

“Responsible, secure and agile data can transform businesses, but many organisations are struggling to enable and accelerate value creation from their data assets.

“At the Centre, we will aim to remove the barriers to data-driven transformation by bringing together business organisation end-users, technology providers and cutting-edge research.”

The centre will undertake research projects in five areas, including responsible use of data assets, data curation at scale, algorithmic transparency, trusted data partnerships and agility in value creation from data.

Researchers are based at UQ in Brisbane and Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne and will collaborate with industry leaders and government organisations across three areas:

  • Data custodians and domain experts that include Queensland Police Service, Allianz Worldwide Partners, Queensland Health, Health and Wellbeing Queensland, Victorian Department of Transport, and Queensland Department of Education;
  • AI, analytics and data management solutions from Max Kelsen, Aginic, Anonyome Labs and Astral; and
  • Platform support from Amazon Web Services.

The five-year program at CIRES will begin in early 2021 and deliver research training to more than 20 PhD students and early career researchers, while offering training workshops on topics such as cybersecurity, AI and data science.

Find out more about data science research at UQ and connect with the CIRES team at cires@uq.edu.au.

Latest