Background

Launched in May 2016, the Cantab Capital Institute for the Mathematics of Information (CCIMI) is now fully operational with research studentships and a number of exciting collaborative projects underway. Established through philanthropic support of £5 million from Cantab Capital Partners, the Institute accommodates research activity on fundamental mathematical problems and methodology for understanding, analysing, processing and simulating data. The data science research performed in the Institute is at the highest international level, with a key aim to extract relevant information from large and high-dimensional data with a predictable certainty.

The advance of data science and the solution of big data questions heavily relies on fundamental mathematical techniques and in particular, their intra-disciplinary engagement. This is at the heart of the Institute, involving mathematical expertise ranging from statistics, applied and computational analysis, to topology and discrete geometry - all with the common goal of advancing data science questions.

This event provided an opportunity for a more detailed update on current research taking place at the Institute, associated challenges and other potential collaborative opportunities.

Aims and Objectives

Current research projects being undertaken by the Institute encompass a variety of activity, from the development of mathematical and statistical tools and techniques for high-dimensional data analysis to hybrid image reconstruction and analysis models. As well as the development of rigorous machine learning methodologies that are accessible by mathematical and statistical analysis techniques. Applications of interest include adaptive image analysis, such as image classification, segmentation and enhancement, all the way to inverse problems in industrial and medical imaging.

This event provided an update to the original launch in May, providing more detailed information on research projects and collaborations, as well as highlighting potential new ones. It featured presentations of some of the current project collaborations.

The Institute currently has 11 projects:

• Formation and Adaptation of Biological Transportation Networks
• Statistical and Computational Aspects of Aggregating Data Summaries
• Mathematics of Machine Learning: Mathematical Learning Methods for Adaptive and Robust Data Analysis
• Mixing Times
• Denoising Geodesic Ray Transforms
• Mathematical challenges in Electron Tomography
• Mathematical Challenges of Large Environmental Data Sets
• Computational and Statistical Joint Image Analysis
• Statistical Applications of Persistent Homology
• Bayesian Inference for Discretely Sampled Diffusions - Solving the Nonlinear Inverse Problem
• To Create a Semantic Search Engine for Mathematical Literature

For more information on these projects please visit the CCIMI Website.

The Institute's research and projects cover a diverse range of areas across Big Data and so this event was of interest to individuals from multiple researcher, industry and public communities.

Presentations were followed by a drinks and networking reception and the afternoon finished with a Public Lecture by David Spiegelhalter. A copy of the programme can be found here.

Registration and Venue

Attendance was free.

The event took place at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge.