Alan Turing Institute/DSO Labs Singapore Collaboration Call for Novel Methods in AI and Data Science

Founded in 2015 as a registered charity, the Alan Turing Institute is the national institute for data science and artificial intelligence (AI), and has its headquarters at the British Library in London.

The Alan Turing Institute/DSO Labs Singapore Collaboration initiative seeks to fund several projects to develop novel methods in AI and data science within specific themes. The Institute is working in partnership with DSO National Laboratories, a large national defence research and development organisation in Singapore.

Aiming to explore new research methods designed to help understand complex datasets, the partnership will cover different modalities such as image, text and audio. Researchers will work to develop novel methods to help with the analysis of these complex data sets.

The eligible themes are:

• Misinformation and disinformation – New techniques in analysing social media content will enable the identification of harmful online material such as malign influence, extremist rhetoric and the encouragement of serious violence, whether it is spread as text, image or video. This will help to curb the speed at which such material can be shared and ensure that citizens continue to benefit from safe and trusted online spaces.
• Humanitarian aid and disaster relief – In a period of global disasters fuelled by a changing climate, the ability to effectively provide responses to these disasters becomes more important than ever. A growing ability to collect data about such disasters, driven by more prolific sensors and autonomous vehicles, provides a significant opportunity to first responders in tackling these disasters. AI techniques can help in areas such as analysing imagery, locating survivors and providing important cultural, contextual and linguistic support to first responders, especially in typically low-resource languages. Such techniques are of much importance in multilateral humanitarian relief efforts.
• Counter terrorism – Data analysis plays a large and substantial part in countering extremism. Analysts have to sift through large amounts of data to find threats, looking for the hidden information that could result in a foiled extremist plot. Novel AI techniques can help analysts undertake this in a more efficient and expedient way.

The scheme is open to researchers from any UK-based university or research institute. The lead applicant must be based in a UK university or research institute. Co-investigators do not have to be UK-based or based in a university.

The typical funding for projects on this programme is around £250,000 for an 18-month project. Shorter projects are welcome, but each proposal will be assessed on its own merits, against the assessment criteria and in relation to the suite of projects across themes. The funding available is 100% fEC and can cover salaries, overhead costs and other direct costs.

All projects must start no later than 1 February 2023 and must end before the end of August 2024. The project length cannot exceed 24 months.

Applications must be submitted by the deadline of 10 October 2022 (13:00 BST).

Further information can be found here: Call for proposals 2022 – DSO Labs Singapore Collaboration | The Alan Turing Institute