Last year, a successful Turing-LIDA Data Study Group took place – an intensive two-week hackathon with 62 researchers, at different stages of their careers and from a number of different countries, rising to one of six challenges set by different organisations. Some amazing research was done in a very short time, and five of the six reports into their findings have now been published:

Sainsbury’s – Investigating the impact of the UK’s Soft Drinks Industry Levy on consumers’ purchases of soft drinks

Morrisons – Optimising the supply chain to minimise waste and delivery mileage

Asda – Exploring and quantifying the effect of weather on sales

Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland – Leveraging LiDAR and Street View data for road feature detection

Network Rail – Automatic detection of counterfort drains

Data Study Groups are a perfect opportunity for organisations (Challenge Owners) to test questions/problems quickly and with minimal resource, gaining insight into potential ways to further develop those areas of research.  They also give researchers, at all stages of their careers, the chance to collaborate with others from different institutions and different disciplines, and apply their knowledge to real-world problems.  For more information, visit The Alan Turing Institute’s Data Study Groups page.