Engagement & Highlights

Please find highlights and updates from The Alan Turing Institute, the UCL Turing University Liaison Team, and from the wider AI & data science community.

Apply now for the Turing PhD Enrichment scheme

The Turing has 20-25 placements available for full-time doctoral students interested in their key research areas:

- Transformation of Health
- Environment and Sustainability
- Defence and National Security
- Fundamental Research in Data Science and AI

All placements will start in early October 2025. The deadline for applications is 10 March 2025, 12 (midday).

Read more here.

TUT Workshop in Environment and Sustainability - Mapping Capacity at UCL

In July this year the UCL Turing University Team (TUT) organised a workshop focussing on Environment and Sustainability. The aim of the workshop was to bring the UCL community together to discuss potential collaboration across departments, and to explore collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute’s Grand Challenge on "Environment and Sustainability."

The workshop featured keynote speakers including Professor Marc Deisenroth, Director of Science and Innovation at the Turing Institute, Sam Balch, Director of UCL Grand Challenges, and Dr James Paskins, Deputy Director, UCL Grand Challenges. The event also featured roundtable discussions on topics such as Climate, Net Zero and Energy, Biodiversity, and Sustainability in Cities.
The engagement, the discussions and feedback on the day, has helped shaped how the TUT plan to run future events and workshops. The TUT is currently planning to host an event early next year focussing on Health, aligning with another of The Turing Institute’s Grand Challenges.
To read the Summary derived from the Workshop please click here
If you like to find out more about future events and how you can engage with the TUT or The Alan Turing Institute, please contact the Turing Liaison Manager.

UCL TUT Change in Leadership. From September, 2024 Professor Elsa Arcaute will take over as Academic Lead.

Elsa is currently a Turing Fellow and a Professor of Complexity Science at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). She is a physicist with a masters in Mathematics (part III of the Mathematical Tripos) and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Cambridge, UK. Her doctoral research was on Clifford algebras applied to Penrose's twistors, and to multi-particle wave-functions. She moved to the field of Complex Systems while visiting Prof. Henrik Jensen at the Complexity and Networks group at Imperial College London. Later she joined the group as a postdoc where, working with Prof. Kim Christensen as part of a multidisciplinary project funded by the EPSRC, her research focused on self-regulation in social systems. The work was done alongside Dr Ana Sendova-Franks, a biologist who manipulated ant colonies, Dr Torbjorn Dahl, an engineer who programmed robots, and Dr Angela Espinosa, a social scientist who developed an intervention for the viability of an Irish eco-village.

The TUT team remain as a group, comprising Prof Elsa Arcaute, Prof Miguel Rodrigues, Dr Irina Bass and Jess Livermore.

UCL Turing Fellows announced. In March 2024, the Turing announced its new cohort of Turing Fellows.Tne Turing Fellows represent a community of exceptional researchers at the forefront of data science, AI and/or related disciplines. The Turing University Team can now share the names of ourTuring Fellows from UCL.

The TUT attended AI UK - the UK’s national showcase of data science and AI in March. AI UK is a showcase of how data science and AI can be applied to society's biggest challenges, with a focus on The Alan Turing Institute's grand challenges, defence and security, environment and sustainability, and transformation of healthcare.

The Chancellor has announced £100 million investment in the Alan Turing Institute. The investment will build on the work of the Turing, helping it to bring the AI community together to address national and international challenges in areas such as: health, environment and sustainability, defence and security.

Turing awarded £1.7M to convene new community of data professionals. The Alan Turing Institute has been awarded £1.7M by UKRI to establish a national network of professionals who work in data, such as data stewards, data librarians, data wranglers and data engineers.

The Turing has appointed four new Directors to address society’s biggest challenges through data science and AI. The announcement, made on Wednesday 14 February, is a key milestone in implementing the Turing’s new strategy which shapes how the Institute will use data science and AI for social good. Read more about the announcement here

If you have any relevant stories that you would like to suggest for consideration, please contact the Turing University Liaison Team.