Key headlines:
The Turner Kirk Trust founders have provided a £5 million philanthropic donation to the Mathematics faculty at the University of Cambridge to establish the Cantab Capital Institute for the Mathematics of Information (CCIMI), a brand-new centre for fundamental mathematics research.
This new Institute will accommodate research activity on fundamental mathematical problems and methodology for understanding, analysing, processing and simulating data. The data science performed at the Institute will be on the highest international level, aiming to extract the relevant information from large- and high-dimensional data with a predictable certainty.
The Institute is an intra-disciplinary collaboration between the Department for Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) and the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics (DPMMS). This means that it is a joint effort between a range of researchers, who work on projects from very pure mathematical theory, to teams working on more applied mathematics. The collaboration at the Institute will involve these researchers pulling together and working on the pressing needs of the data revolution.
“The CCIMI will be a best-in-class location for researchers from around the world to work on mathematics research and tackle real-world issues affecting all of us.”
They will do this by developing mathematical theory and methodology for extracting information from data. The mathematics of information works on any topic related to data and information, and brings together aspects of all areas of mathematics and the Institute will provide a forum for new ideas within the field.
The CCIMI will use mathematical science techniques to analyse data to tackle issues in fields from financial markets, urban planning and data processing to data science in healthcare and biology. Their goal in doing so is to find ways to use and apply ‘big data’ to address issues across a range of disciplines and industries.
The Cantab Capital Institute was opened by Professor Stephen Hawking on Friday 11th, 2016, who challenged Ph.D. students at the University of Cambridge to find new ways to use the endless amount of data we have at our disposal responsibly to understand and improve our world.
Ewan Kirk, Co-founder of the Turner Kirk Trust and Founder of Cantab Capital Partners, said:
“The University of Cambridge has long been one of the best places in the world to conduct mathematical research, and we hope this gift, and the establishment of the Institute, will play a part in its continued role in global mathematics.
“We have more data at our fingertips now than ever before, and the need to analyse and find applications for it becomes more important every day. These collaborations between different mathematical disciplines will be vital in finding new, practical uses for big data.
“The CCIMI will be a best-in-class location for researchers from around the world to work on mathematics research and tackle real-world issues affecting all of us.”
