Scalable Computing | School of Computing

Teaching

The Scalable group has established strong collaborations with Newcastle’s School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics. Key to this was the Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Cloud Computing for Big Data, which is now supported through investment from Newcastle and our industrial partners, especially Red Hat (IBM). The CDT creates future leaders with the rare dual competencies in the statistics and computing required to drive forward scalable data analytics. It has successfully brought together a diverse range of students, many of whom have had placements at companies as far away as California (Twitter) and Australia (Woodside). Following on from the CDT, Scalable established an expanding portfolio of spin-off MSc programmes in Data Science, supported by Office for Students to fill the long-term research and innovation pipeline with a diverse set of high-achieving students.

Impact

Many of our projects involve industry and over the past 6 years Newcastle has set up major initiatives to engage at scale with companies that lack their own data analytics skills. Among these, Scalable group members were pivotal in the formation of the National Innovation Centre for Data, a £30M centre that provides a route for Scalable and all Newcastle data-centric research to have major impact on tens of public and private sector organisations each year through collaborative projects. The new Catalyst building - a melting pot of academics, students and industry working on data driven innovation - provides spaces designed by the group for interaction with industry (e.g. IBM Red Hat) and includes state-of-the-art visualisation facilities, including the brand new Team Decision Theatre. Evidencing the long term success of Scalable two of the most recent REF 2021 impact cases came from messaging systems and data provenance research in the group.