Pledges £3.5 million to support Cardiff University effort to share knowledge in data science with SMEs
The Welsh Government has pledged £3.5 million to support a project to make knowledge around data science and analytics available to small businesses.
It has indicated that it will make the money available for the Data Innovation Accelerator (DIA), which has been part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and is aimed at enabling researchers to work with companies specialising in ICT and cyber security, advanced materials, energy and eco-innovation.
The DIA is expected to launch in November and will be based within the Data Innovation Research Institute at Cardiff University. The university’s School of Computer Science and Informatics will be recruiting eight skilled data scientists to kick-start the project this autumn.
DIA co-director Dr Pete Burnap said: “The DIA will fill a gap in the current data science ecosystem in Wales. Schemes exist to support undergraduate qualifications, graduate mentoring, and help bigger businesses buy in expertise. But no provision currently exists to systematically build data science awareness, capacity and skills with SMEs in Wales.
“SMEs do not have the scale of resources available to the public sector or large companies to trial new ways of working, or invest in unproven business transformation underpinned by data science. DIA seeks to address this gap.”
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