Research

'Big Data' is a general term, referring to the huge volumes and varieties of data which have become ubiquitous in government, society and science.

The size and complexity of most modern data sets challenges state-of-the-art data acquisition, computation, analysis, storage and retrieval methods. Much focus has been placed on the application of Big Data methods for mining large data sets, but less attention has been paid to the theoretical underpinning of the field.

Researchers at the UCL Big Data Institute form part of the UCL Centre for Data Science, and thus work to advance the fundamental mathematical and statistical theory, and quantitative and computational methods needed to draw better insights from extremely large volumes of data. To make this understanding practical, and seek inspiration from real-world problems, the Big Data Institute is making direct progress on big data applications, in conjunction with its founding sponsor Elsevier.

The following research projects are being pursued at the UCL Big Data Institute:

1) Investigation of the role and impact of researchers in academic networks
Principal Investigators: Professor Sofia Olhede (UCL BDI) & Dr Lili Tcheang (Elsevier).

2) Investigation of relationships between researchers on academic networks
Principal Investigators: Professor Patrick Wolfe (UCL BDI) & David De Kock, Jacek Szejda (Elsevier).

3) Models of citations and downloads as heterogeneous count time series.
Principal Investigators: Professor Sofia Olhede (UCL BDI) & Dr Harriet Muncey (Elsevier).

4) Prediction of the functionality of novel proteins.
Principal Investigators: Professor David Jones (UCL) & Dr Jaqui Hodgkinson (Elsevier)

5) Adaptive User Modelling for Personalized Experience.
Principal Investigators: Dr Emine Yilmaz (UCL), Dr Bob Schijvenaars, Dr Maciej Rymarz (Elsevier)

6) Construction of Method and Algorithm Knowledge Graphs.
Principal Investigators: Dr Sebastian Riedel (UCL), Dr Paul Groth (Elsevier)

7) Clustering Heterogeneous Networks of Researchers.
Principal Investigators: Professor Patrick Wolfe (UCL BDI), Dr Matt Hobby (Elsevier)

8) Modelling Network Features in Large-Scale Heterogeneous Network Populations
Principal Investigators: Professor Patrick Wolfe (UCL BDI), Dr Matt Hobby (Elsevier)