Eleri Pound

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Kia Ora from New Zealand: CDAS students present their work at the International Medical Geography Symposium, Queenstown

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LIDA and GeoHealth Lab researchers at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch

 

This summer, CDAS students Francesca Pontin and Vicki Jenneson from the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA) took their research to the other side of the world at the International Medical Geography Symposium (IMGS) in Queenstown New Zealand (1 – 4 July).  Here they summarise their experiences.

“We feel so privileged to have been given the opportunity to present our work as part of a diverse conference programme, which brought together geography, epidemiology and policy. It was an added bonus to have the opportunity to explore New Zealand’s natural beauty, before, during and after the conference.”

Vicki’s journey started in Auckland with a trip to the University of Auckland to meet Professor Cliona Ni Mhurchu, a key figure in healthy retail interventions. This new connection could lead to exciting future collaboration prospects and add value to the existing relationship with Vicki’s UK retail data partner.

Fran and Vicki then met for two days of workshops at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. They were joined by fellow Leeds students Charlotte Sturley and Rachel Oldroyd as well as supervisor Michelle Morris and LIDA and CDAS director, Mark Birkin.

“It was a pleasure to meet contacts from New Zealand’s Ministry of Health and the Canterbury Geohealth Lab and to learn about their unique collaborative model. Along with Rachel and Charlotte, we’ll continue to work closely with the New Zealand team to write an upcoming commentary paper about the health research-policy landscape in New Zealand. We hope that this relationship will continue to grow in the future and look towards the potential for overseas exchanges between LIDA and the Geohealth Lab students and staff.”

After the workshop in Christchurch, it was on to Queenstown for the IMGS conference, but not before an impressive pre-flight Parkrun effort by the team.

Charlotte, Michelle, Rachel and Fran endured -5 degrees at the Hagley Park Parkrun in Christchurch

The Queenstown conference took place in a spectacular setting framed by mountains and Lake Wakatipu. Although a daunting prospect for some of the students it was their first international conference, they were soon encouraged by its friendly and supportive atmosphere. The students embraced the unique opportunity to engage with a diverse global community of multi-disciplinary researchers across health, geography, policy and more. The conference provided a great platform for them to develop their networking skills, and along with their supervisors, Fran and Vicki fostered new and cemented existing connections with researchers both in the UK and worldwide.

The IMGS celebrated cultural diversity, with traditional Māori singing and dancing, while speakers addressed the serious issues of health inequalities affecting indigenous Māori and Pacific populations in New Zealand, providing great context to local problems.

View of Queenstown from the conference venue at dusk

Fran enjoyed presenting her work on the use of smartphone data for monitoring physical activity, and said “It was great to be able to present my research to such a specialist and knowledgeable audience. The ensuing conversation around using commercial smartphone data to monitor activity highlighted the potential such data provides in extending the current sphere of knowledge. IMGS has allowed me to make great connections in the UK and further abroad, with potential collaborations on the horizon.”

Fran Pontin presenting at the IMGS, Queenstown

 

Of her talk about spatial and demographic patterns in fruit and vegetable purchasing in Leeds, Vicki said: “It was a really encouraging experience to see the level of discussion and interest that my talk generated. It motivates me to know that I’m doing something truly new and valuable to the wider research community. The dataset that I’m working with is novel and there was lots of excitement about it; I feel that presenting at IMGS helped to put myself and LIDA on the international scene for healthy food retail and big data research.”

Vicki Jenneson presenting at the IMGS, Queenstown

The students also found time for plenty of downtime to explore the breath-taking surroundings. Day trips were invaluable team-building opportunities which strengthened relationships between students and their supervisors within informal settings including; boat cruises, a very muddy bike ride, a winery tour, climbing mountains, skiing and the conference dinner!

Mark Birkin, Fran Pontin, Michelle Morris and Charlotte Sturley pre-muddy cycle ride

Fran Pontin and Michelle Morris on the summit of Ben Lomond

Students Charlotte Sturley, Rachel Oldroyd, Vicki Jenneson & Fran Pontin with supervisor Michelle Morris

Scenic walk around Lake Wakatipu for LIDA students and staff

The students would like to thank the Leeds for Life Conference Award scheme, the Centre for Spatial Analysis and Policy at the School of Geography and their supervisors for their funding and support which enabled them to embark on this exciting experience.

The next IMGS meeting will take place in Edinburgh in 2021. Both Fran and Vicki hope to return to this meeting to present further findings as they approach the end of their PhD research project. The IMGS conference is highly recommended to PhD students with a focus on epidemiology and spatial applications to health research.

 

Introducing Dr Henri Kauhanen, Postdoctoral Fellow

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Dr Henri Kauhanen is ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow with the Data Analytics & Society CDT from October 2018 to September 2019. Affiliated with the division of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Manchester, Henri works on mathematical and computational models of the population dynamics of language, looking for explanations of universal factors of linguistic variation and change that recur from one language to another. Originally trained as a cognitive scientist, Henri received his PhD in linguistics from the University of Manchester in April 2018, supervised by linguists Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero and George Walkden (now at the University of Konstanz) and theoretical physicist Tobias Galla.

 

For his one-year ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, Henri is taking a data-driven approach, concentrating on a focal topic in language dynamics but one that has so far received surprisingly little attention. This is the question of what basic rates different features of human language evolve at, and what is to be made of cases where several changes are governed by identical rates of change. To this end, he is writing computer software that aids in fitting the predictions of different models of linguistic change to empirical data, as well as conducting Monte Carlo power analyses of existing methods for model selection, utilising Manchester’s HTCondor high-throughput computing framework. The software will be released as open source packages for the R statistical computing environment by the end of the fellowship.

 

In addition to work on implementing computer code and writing research articles, the project includes a significant networking and skills development component. Henri attended the 2019 Complex Systems Summer School run by the Santa Fe Institute [link: http://www.santafe.edu] in Santa Fe, New Mexico in June and July, attending lectures on complexity, chaos, networks, nonlinear dynamics and related topics, but also working on group projects with physicists, biologists and social scientists. In August, Henri is organising a symposium on language change at Manchester [link: http://rusesymposium.org.uk]; alongside regular talks, the two-day long event will feature three keynotes by eminent scholars in the field, focusing on resolving some of the often considerable tension between computational modelling and empirical, data-oriented work.

 

In the future, Henri is planning to continue working on computational models of language change, aiming in particular to increase the realism of currently available models. In October, he is moving to Germany to take up a second postdoc at the Zukunftskolleg [link: http://www.uni-konstanz.de/zukunftskolleg], an Institute for Advanced Study for Junior Researchers at the University of Konstanz.

 

To find out more about Henri’s research, visit his website at http://henr.in [link: http://henr.in].

CDAS at GISRUK, Newcastle 2019

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The centre was recently very well represented at the GISRUK conference – From Data to Decisions.  Presentations were given by several of our students and others also presented posters at the conference.

Annabel Whipp who is in her 2nd year at CDAS, was awarded one of only ten Early career researcher scholarships in order to pay for her attendance and then went on to win the best poster prize at the conference. Annabel’s poster which was based upon her work on spatio-temporal incidences of deliberate fire within West Yorkshire can be found as a digital copy here – Annabel Whipp GISRUK Poster

 

Presentations:

Nikos Patias – A Scalable Analytical Framework for Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Neighbourhood Change: A Sequence Analysis Approach 

Jennie Gray – Exploring the Dynamics of Geodemographics 

Keiran Suchak – Data Assimilation for Agent-Based Modelling: An Implementation of the Ensemble Kalman Filter 

Sedar Olmez – Modelling the dynamics of police demand and resourcing over space and time

Lena Kilian – Understanding patterns of consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions in Bristol 

Annabel Whipp – Developing a methodology for validating pedestrian counts from Wi-Fi sensors to aid in quantifying the ambient population 

 

Posters:

Annabel Whipp – Incidences of deliberate fire in West Yorkshire: Spatio-temporal patterns and influences on trends

Krasen Samardzhiev – Analyzing urban vitality patterns with topological data analysis

Melanie Green – Comparing the urban environment with socioeconomic characteristics using features extracted from aerial imagery

Ryan Urquhart – Socio-demographic and spatial disaggregation of E-commerce use in the grocery market in Great Britain

 

Further projects open now for application to CDAS

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Six further CDAS projects are now open for applications for the third cohort of students based at the Universities of Leeds and Manchester. We will also be advertising projects at the University Sheffield shortly along with further projects at Leeds and Manchester.

The projects are all partnered with an external organisation giving you the opportunity to work closely with industry. Opportunities range from using police data to understand violence, to working with Engineering consultants on using artificial intelligence to improve traffic safety.

We are looking for graduates from a wide range of backgrounds with interests in how data can be used to address social science questions using statistical or predictive techniques. You will work with a multi-disciplinary team of supervisors as well as having the opportunity to work with external partners on real life problems.

The programme is an integrated one (+4), where you will undertake an MSc in Data Analytics over the first two years which will provide you with the foundation skills to complete your research project.

Details for all available projects can be found on our available projects page

Please email datacdt@leeds.ac.uk if you wish to be notified when more projects are advertised.

University of Leeds projects

University of Manchester projects

Projects now available at the University of Liverpool: Application deadline 7th April

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Five new CDAS projects are now open for applications for the third cohort of students based at the University of Liverpool. We will also be advertising projects at the Universities of Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield shortly.

The projects are all partnered with an external organisation giving you the opportunity to work closely with industry. Opportunities range from using police data to understand violence, to working with Engineering consultants on using artificial intelligence to improve traffic safety.

We are looking for graduates from a wide range of backgrounds with interests in how data can be used to address social science questions using statistical or predictive techniques. You will work with a multi-disciplinary team of supervisors as well as having the opportunity to work with external partners on real life problems.

The programme is an integrated one (+4), where you will undertake an MSc in Data Analytics over the first two years which will provide you with the foundation skills to complete your research project.

Details for all available projects can be found on our available projects page

Liverpool projects:

Counting People

Human Dynamics within an Urban and Regional Context

Improving the Geolocation of Emergency Service Response through Big Data

Using big data to design resilient coastal cities

The Geodemographics of British Streets

 

Please contact us with any questions

CDAS first Annual Partner Event

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On the 18th September, the Centre for Data Analytics and Society held its first annual partner event at the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA). Attended by academics from across the CDT institutions and representatives from partner organisations, the event proved a great opportunity for networking and for the students to share what’s been keeping them so busy in their first year.

The event was opened by LIDA Director, Professor Mark Birkin, who was key to the establishment of the CDT. It was then over to the students from each of the CDT institutions at the Universities of Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield. The students gave group presentations showcasing their learnings from the MSc modules, experiences of working with partners during internship projects, and how they’d already started applying their new data skills to their PhD topics. With research areas ranging from health to crime, transport, retail and more, the students displayed a broad use of data science techniques such as clustering and text analysis, including some ‘just for fun’ projects like Keiran’s analysis of Pokémon characteristics. The presentations gave a real flavour of the interdisciplinary nature of the CDT and a clear sense of collegiality was on show.

Marking the completion of the first year for the Data Analytics and Society CDT, the event also provided an opportunity for feedback and discussion from student, academic and partner perspectives. We’re excited that the ideas raised during the event have led to the launch of our new @DataCDT twitter page and the set-up of thematic interest groups to promote collaboration and knowledge-share across the institutions. We feel that this is especially important now that the CDT has grown in number, having recently welcomed a brand-new cohort of first year students.

Having completed day two of the Introduction to Programming module in Python, the new student cohort later joined the event for an informal poster and networking session. This was a chance to view academic posters prepared by each of the current students and to ask questions about their work and experiences so far, which seemed to fuel excitement and settle nerves in equal measure among the new students.

As the CDT enters its second year, we’re excited to work with new academics and partners and to see ongoing projects progress. A number of our students have already been getting out to share their preliminary research findings at conferences nationally and overseas. So, watch this space and follow our twitter page to stay in touch with our CDT students as they continue to work at the cutting edge of their subject areas.

Vicki Jenneson

Presentations from the students are below and posters from this event can be found on this page – https://datacdt.org/meet-the-students/student-posters2018/

CDAS Leeds presentation

CDAS Sheffield presentation

CDAS Manchester Presentation

CDAS Liverpool presentation

Centre for Data Analytics and Society welcomes its second cohort of students

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We are the second cohort of the Data Analytics and Society CDT funded by the ESRC based in the University of Leeds; Maria, Debbie, Sedar, Caroline, Colin and Lena. The other CDT students are spread over the other partner universities, the University of Sheffield, the University of Manchester and the University of Liverpool. For us at Leeds, projects cover a wide range of topics, from energy footprints to consumer data for health, cycling infrastructure, data assimilation challenges and development of policy simulations. For this we have teamed up with partners including Improbable, CycleStreets and Dietary Assessment Ltd.

Mimicking the first cohort’s structure, we began with an intensive programming for social sciences module using python. This was taught at Leeds and is part of the integrated MSc. It was a great introduction to python for those who have not used this programming language previously and a refresher for those who have. This module set us off to a good start into our studies and we consider it a significant stepping stone towards further skill development.

Starting new programmes can be difficult, but with Vicki, Annabel, Jennie, Fran, Eugeni, Ryan, Keiran and the rest of the LIDA staff guiding us through our first few weeks here, we have been able to settle into our places at the university and LIDA easily. We look forward to what these next few years will bring.

CDAS student awarded best presentation at Nutrition Futures conference

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Victoria Jenneson presented at Nutrition Society’s Nutrition Futures conference, for the student section of the society and received an award for the best presentation. Vicki gave a 3 minute lightening talk entitled “Systematic review of electronic sales data in population dietary surveillance”, outlining the purpose of the review and her findings on her PhD project so far.  The abstract for my work will be published in the Proceedings of the Nutrition Society.

Vicki said:  “I received some really lovely feedback from fellow students on how I told a story and engaged people in my research, so I’m really grateful for the presentation training we received earlier in the year from Simon Cain at Westbourne Consulting. The Nutrition Futures event concluded yesterday with talks on presentation skills, career planning, effective networking and a careers panel. I really enjoyed it and I hope to get more involved in Nutrition Society events in the future.”