The University of Bristol's central hub for data science and data-intensive research, connecting a multidisciplinary community of experts across the University and beyond.
Trevor Hastie, Professor of Statistics and Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University who will present ‘Statistical learning with big data’
As our ability to gather and store data improves, we are faced with the task of analysing these ever growing mounds of information. This has required Statisticians to gain computing and database skills and Engineers and Computer Scientists to learn statistical modelling and data analysis. The result is a Data Scientist, one of the hottest job descriptions in the tech world. In this talk Trevor will give some examples of big data and data science challenges and explore some approaches in detail.
Dan Crichton, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Dan Crichton, Program Manager, Principal Investigator and Principal Computer Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will talk about ‘Data science: unlocking scientific research from space to biology’
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and NASA have unlocked unprecedented amounts of scientific knowledge through exploration of our solar system, universe and planet Earth. The robotic spacecraft that JPL built to support this scientific research has generated enormous amounts of data that have also challenged the traditional approaches to capturing, managing, analysing and ultimately gaining insight from the data. Newer architectures and methodologies are needed to consider the entire observing system, from spacecraft to archive, with integrated data-driven discovery approaches enabling data exploitation both onboard and on the ground. Advances in data and computational science capabilities offer opportunities to gain new insights from space missions and the vast data collections that NASA has amassed over the last fifty years. Through a joint partnership in Data Science, JPL and Caltech are working to innovate new architectures methodologies and technologies that are not only enabling new approaches for space and Earth science, but also benefiting other disciplines such as biomedicine.
Rudolph the seal, Manu the jaguar and a wolf named Slavc are just a few of the characters featured in the stories of the journeys animals take when they travel across the world. These animal stories are demonstrated through graphics produced from enormous amounts of data and displayed in the book ‘Where the animals go’.
Dr James Cheshire
Last night the author of ‘Where the animals go’, James Cheshire, a geographer and associate professor at University College London came to Bristol to give a public talk in the School of Geography at the University of Bristol. James was introduced by Andrew Byatt, a wildlife documentary film producer for the BBC Natural History Unit and a producer of The Blue Planet and Planet Earth.
James began by telling us how he first started mapping the occurrence of surnames in the States and showed us a graphic of the geographical spread of surnames across the USA. James has worked with Oliver Uberti, an award-winning designer and visual journalist for some time, initially on a series of maps and graphics using data captured from people in London including mapping peoples cycling journeys into and out of the city. Together they produced the book London: The Information Capital.
This mapping of the journeys of people turned to the mapping of journeys of animals, and James has used the approach favoured in wildlife documentaries of telling the story of one individual animal. James showed us a graphic illustrating the depth of the ocean that Rudolph the seal is swimming through as well as the swirls of wind that Albatrosses are flying around in Antarctica.
James talked about a road trip to visit snowy owls in the Great Lakes and one of the map graphics showed the journey the owls take heading back to the Arctic. James and Oliver combined weather data and animal tracking data to come up with a neat graphic demonstrating warblers dodging tornados. Another vast data collection on ants showed how some ants take on roles of nursing, cleaning and foraging, often relating the age of the ant.
James alluded to the support that they give in order to try to cause the least disruption to animals in their natural habitat. He talked about when Oliver spent some time with Save the Elephants in Africa, tracking elephants journeys due to the building of new train lines and roads, and the long distance the elephants had to travel. They were keen on the idea of building crossing tunnels for the wildlife to cope with the man-made development. An interesting observation was that despite animals having to take sometimes quite extensive detours to their normal tracks, they very easily adapted to their new routes. He talked of the crocodiles best left alone in Australia, as in some cases where crocodiles were moved due to the perception that crocs are bad, they made extraordinary effort to get back to where they were moved from, sometimes travelling many miles to return where they came from. James described the big PR campaign organised to save a wolf called Slavc from hunters on his long journey across the Alps which is shown in another extraordinary GPS tracking visualisation.
Dr James Cheshire. University of Bristol. 18 January 2018
In order to develop maps and graphics tracking wildlife, the very latest technology has been deployed including satellites, drones, camera traps and mobile phone networks. Where before, tracking animals meant following footprints, a vast array of technology, gathering and analysis of huge amounts of data can be utilised in order for us to learn more about the lives of these animals. James told us that the use of social media through both Facebook and Instagram is also being used to monitor where animals are travelling to around the world. Some wildlife adapt in unusual ways to the changing world and James told us about storks pitching up on a rubbish dump in Morocco to save making a long migration to find food.
James said that the recent appreciation of data visualisation is useful in communicating to funders as well as of course to the public and enjoys providing workshops on how to visualise data.
Professor Rich Harris, Professor of Quantitative Social Geography who organised the evening summed up saying it is “just extraordinary what you can do with data and maps”. To find out more and to buy the book please visit Where the animals go
On a cold January morning we made our way through Millennium Square’s Winter Fair and up the industrial metal spiral staircase to the welcoming space of the Bristol VR Lab. Bristol VR lab is a workspace shared by residents who develop and research virtual, augmented and mixed reality technology, applications and projects made up of people from across the South West. The Jean Golding Institute have formed a collaboration with Bristol VR Lab as well as We The Curious to facilitate the development of a data visualisation project.
Our visit to Bristol VR Lab was for a workshop to introduce University of Bristol researchers who have large datasets to virtual reality / augmented reality experts in order for them to form teams and apply for the prize of £8,000 and the chance to work within the Bristol VR Lab and have their work shown at the Data Dome in We The Curious and at the JGI Showcase on 3 July 2018.
The day started with Kate Robson Brown, JGI Director and Patty Holley, JGI Manager who were both thrilled to be introducing the day and to be involved in an initiative with many new faces. They introduced the format for the day, which included a short presentation from each of the 9 University of Bristol researchers who have datasets, and after lunch all the VR / AR experts had a chance to talk to all the researchers about their datasets and discuss how they would anticipate working with them on such a project.
Seamus Foley, Digital Producer at We The Curious spoke about how they could support the project and about how the goals of We The Curious have evolved from their @Bristol days where they worked to enable science to become more accessible, to now be interested in sparking people’s curiosity, in the wider sense in their updated vision of ‘We The Curious’. Ben Trewhella, CEO at Opposable Group and part of Bristol VR Lab provided information about the space that will be available to the winner of the challenge and how they will have access to expert help in Bristol VR Lab.
Natalie Thurlby, 3D version of Waddington’s landscape
The datasets presented were:
‘The Virtual Fish’ Chrissy Hammond gave an animated talk about how she was looking to develop a visualisation of the data collected from zebrafish and her work on skeletal diseases.
‘Using virtual reality as a tool to explore nanoscale phenomena’ was presented by Freddie Russell-Pavier, Oliver Payton and Namid Shatil who would like to be able to visualise how small, small things are.
‘Global atmospheric methane simulation’ was presented by Angharad Stell, a PhD candidate, who demonstrated the aspects that cause methane emissions around the globe and how she would like to see this visualised.
‘Associations between primary care antibiotic prescribing and antimicrobial resistance E Coli causing UTIs’ was presented by Ashley Hammond where she highlighted the global issue of antibiotic resistance and how the geographical distribution could be visualised in an interactive map and be useful both for clinicians and to provide awareness to the public.
‘3D High resolution brain MRI’ Jade Thai enthused about her Functional MRIs of patients with conditions like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Myalgic Encephalopathy (ME) and is keen to have the opportunity to be able to ‘visualise the brain in action.’
‘Uncovering Greenland’s hidden landscape’ is Jonathan Bamber’s project based on 20 years of data collection from NASA and UKRCs. He showed us paper maps and other visualisations of sea level rise as a consequence of global warming but would really like to be able to have a VR walk through.
Jade Thai, 3D High resolution brain MRI
‘Visualising big data to make extraordinary discoveries about human health and disease’ Oliver Davies presented on behalf of the MRC IEU where they use big data to understand human disease.
‘Interactive protein-protein docking using VR’ was presented by Richard Sessions who is interested in how proteins interact with each other and is keen to develop a 3D game, matching proteins which could not only be useful for scientists developing machine learning approaches to protein-protein docking but also might appeal to the public.
‘Exploring Waddington’s landscape in 3D’ The final talk of the morning by another PhD student, Natalie Thurlby, was concerning how cells differentiate and the potential for developing a 3D version of the landscape from gene expression data.
Seamus Foley, Digital Producer at We The Curious said “We are really excited about the quality and variety of datasets that have been put forward by the university researchers. The combination of the real research, some of Bristol’s most innovative VR creators, and the experience of our Live Science team, we think will result in something unique and engaging for our audience”
After many interesting conversations in the afternoon, we anticipate people will begin to build teams and write their project brief to be submitted by 25 January. The selection panel will then make their decision and the winners will be announced at the beginning of February.
This data visualisation challenge workshop has highlighted the community of people interested in visualising complex data, both for within the scientific community and to reach out to communicate complex information to the public, and we hope to facilitate more conversations in this area in the future.
We were impressed with the amount of strong applications to our latest round of seed corn funding and are very pleased to announce this year’s JGI Seed corn fund winners:
Sarah Sullivan and Piotr Slowinski for their project ‘Social movement differences and risk of psychosis: Data-driven approaches for mental health diagnostics’
Agnieszka Bierzynska & Mark Rogers for their project ‘Developing computational tools for analysis of exome and genome data in highly phenotyped rare disease cohorts’
Dima Damen for her project ‘EPIC-KITCHENS 2018 Dataset – JGI Sponsorship for Large-Scale Dataset’
Andrew Dowsey, Andrew Davidson, Kate Heesom, David Matthews, Christoph Wuelfing & David Lee for their project ‘Enabling advanced analytics for all users of the proteomics facility’
Massimo Antognozzi & Matthew Avison for their project ‘Development of machine learning algorithms for antimicrobial resistance testing’
Fernando Sanchez-Vizcaino, Kristen Reyher, Andrew Dowsey and Jon Massey for their project ‘Fostering collaborations with UK livestock diagnostic laboratories to integrate data sources on antimicrobial resistance into a multi-use data resource’
Luke Western and Zhe Sha for their project ‘Exploiting big data for greenhouse gas emissions estimation using INLA’
Naoki Masuda and Mark Viney for their project ‘Immune response networks in wild mice’
Additionally, we have agreed to support the following workshops:
Kate Hendry and Martyn Tranter for a workshop on ‘Iso-Glace: Novel isotope studies in glaciated environments’
Song Liu for a workshop on ‘Structural change-point detection in high dimensional gene expression profiling sequence’
Work is beginning on the projects and progress will be presented at the JGI Showcase event on 3 July 2018.
Piece written by Euella Jackson and Kamina Walton, October 2017.
Live documentation from the mapping activity held as part of Whose culture? workshop illustrated by Jasmine Thompson
As Zora Neale Hurston once wrote: ‘I feel most coloured when thrown against a sharp white background’. For young people of colour living in Bristol, and entering spaces that are overwhelmingly white or middle class, they often feel defined in terms of their ‘otherness’. Sometimes without even realising it, they bend and contort themselves to fit to the conventions of spaces to make them feel more ‘safe’. For reasons such as this, young people from BAME backgrounds find it difficult to be in and enjoy cultural spaces where they don’t see themselves represented.
“My culture is definitely online when it comes to culture in Bristol, I don’t feel part of it.”
Equality Trust’s research shows a direct correlation between inequality and lower levels of cultural activity. Despite Bristol’s thriving creative sector (contributing significantly to the economy,) the workforce remains disproportionately unrepresentative of the city’s cultural makeup, and there is very limited data about the cultural engagement of BAME communities as audience, staff, and producers. ‘Whose Culture? facilitated by Rising Arts Agency and supported by the Jean Golding Institute, is a creative data project aiming to measure the cultural engagement of BAME young people aged 16-25 through workshops, training, mentoring, and the development of a mobile app. The project’s intention is to create paid work opportunities and pathways into the creative sector for these young people – as well as involving other BAME artists, designers and mentors – as the first step to supporting increased diversification across the Arts.
“It’s not about the space, it’s about the audience. Building a community and audience who care and who will listen.”
The project’s starting point saw Rising’s Creative Director, Kamina Walton, and Creative Producer, Zahra Ash-Harper, working together to devise a pilot workshop. Funding from the Jean Golding Institute (JGI) enabled them to host the event bringing together young people of colour with staff from some of the city’s key cultural organisations in order to start a conversation around cultural engagement and begin to generate some data. Also, they collaborated with two researchers from the School of Education, Francis Giampapa and Cassie Earl, who supported the facilitation at the workshop.
The event was hosted in a prominent cultural institution in the city centre that has a predominantly white, middle-class audience. Holding the session in this space allowed for the young people to gain access to a cultural institution that they may not have felt comfortable in before and share their feelings towards the space during the session. The session, which lasted approximately three hours, facilitated a discussion with the group of young BAME people and staff from numerous cultural organisations in and around Bristol – enabling a conversation that would lead to the generation of data as to how we can work towards bridging the gap between cultural institutions and young people.
Young people’s mapping of their cultural engagement across the cityCultural organisations’ mapping of their offers that include BAME young people
The three main activities of the session were chosen to facilitate fruitful discussions and the sharing of knowledge between the groups. For example, for the mapping exercise, the participants were divided into young people and cultural organisations. Both groups were given enlarged maps of Bristol and were given different briefs.
This exercise was useful in providing a visual representation of the disparity between the two groups and showing the importance of challenging cultural organisations on how they can be more inclusive.The structure of the session and this mixed-method approach of holding discussions, exercises and collaborative activities enabled us to start conversations and collect rich and meaningful data in a fresh, sincere and non-traditional way that illuminated potential blind-spots commonly associated with more structured and quantitative methods such as surveys and questionnaires.
Themes emerged such as the importance of online cultural spaces in addition to physical space, feeling like an outsider, imposter syndrome and the role of audiences in creating a feeling of inclusivity. These are the stories and themes that diversity initiatives don’t always see – they’re so focused on box-ticking and quotas that they fail to consider the lived experiences of those who enter these spaces. By looking at who enters a space and how they engage with it is an interesting way of seeing inclusion (and tokenism) through a new lens.
The session was concluded with an exercise where the workshop participants, both the young people and staff from the cultural institutions were asked to write their future hopes and fears around inclusive work within the sector. Many of the young people expressed fear of not being taken seriously, being tokenised or not seeing change happen, showing how sessions like this are so important.
“I hope that I will be part of ‘culture’ that goes beyond boundaries of place and space, and instead makes me feel included through creativity and the drive to create change.”
“That fairer opportunities are created – pay people, value opinions different to yours, be open and be responsible.”
“Be part of an industry diverse, inclusive and most importantly representative and be allowed to be that platform to create work people can actually relate to.”
Illustration by Jasmine Thompson
Building on this pilot, Whose Culture?’s impact will be to highlight how the cultural sector can be more relevant and accessible to young people of colour by modelling inclusive recruitment and increasing the visibility of BAME communities and their interests to cultural organisations. As representatives of Whose Culture?, young people steering the project will receive paid employment for the duration, leadership training, and sector-wide (and intra-community) prominence. They will also have access to professional networks through mentoring and project engagement.
For the cultural sector, the project will generate invaluable data that could have citywide and national implications in the name of increasing inclusivity and accessibility for all of Bristol’s diverse communities of young people. For Rising, we hope this project will raise its profile as a unique, bespoke agency supporting and nurturing diverse young talent in Bristol, positioning us as a key player in the city’s creative sector.
“[My fear is that] too many people (one person is too many) don’t feel comfortable, don’t feel themselves, feel like an imposter- no one should be made to feel like that.”
Next Steps
Rising has submitted follow-on funding applications to Bristol City Council and the Nisbet Trust to continue this work, the outcome of these applications will be known in December 2017. The plan is to work with the young BAME steering group collecting data more widely across Bristol and to use this information to develop an app that would facilitate the communication between cultural organisations and young BAME people. The Jean Golding Institute invited researchers from across the University to meet the members of the project team as a number of research questions has risen from the workshop and the aim is to facilitate further research collaborations.
We would like to thank the Jean Golding Institute for their belief in and support of the early stages of this project. If you would like to know more, or are interested in supporting the project’s development please contact Kamina Walton: Kamina@rising.org.uk
