Meeting of minds as Oden and Turing Institutes sign MOU

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed between The Alan Turing Institute in London and the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas (UT) at Austin. This formally creates an ambitious agreement led by the Turing’s data-centric engineering program, a major research initiative funded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, a UK nonprofit seeking to protect life and property and support education, engineering-related research and public engagement.

This new collaboration aims to deliver research advances in a number of key impact areas: artificial intelligence for science and engineering, computational science and engineering (CSE), scientific machine learning, and data-centric engineering.

The agreement, signed by UT Austin President Greg Fenves and the Turing’s Institute Director and Chief Executive, Adrian Smith, is expected to continue for five years and establishes plans to develop joint research projects and exchange academic materials and publications, as well as to jointly host meetings, research seminars, workshops and symposia. There are also plans for new opportunities for UT Austin faculty and students to conduct research in London and vice versa.

The Oden Institute is a world-leading interdisciplinary institute dedicated to CSE, which brings together faculty from across 23 different departments in engineering, medicine, the natural sciences, the geosciences, and business. The Oden Institute plays a central role in Texas Computing, a tight collaboration among the units that contribute to UT Austin’s global leadership in computing research, education and technological innovation. It is so named to honor Dr J. Tinsley Oden, widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of the field of computational science and engineering.

Established in 2015, The Alan Turing Institute is a high-profile, vibrant and multidisciplinary national institute, bringing together 13 leading universities from England and Scotland, making it the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. It is named in honor of Alan Turing, whose pioneering work in theoretical and applied mathematics, engineering and computing is considered to have laid the foundations for modern-day data science and AI. The Institute’s goals are to undertake world-class research in data science and AI, apply its research to real-world problems, drive economic impact and societal good, lead the training of a new generation of scientists, and shape the public conversation around data.

“Forging closer ties with The Alan Turing Institute is the first step in what I expect to be a long and rewarding journey for UT Austin and our new UK partners,” said Oden Institute director, Karen Willcox. “Both organizations share a deep commitment to research with real impact, research that can help bring about solutions to the toughest challenges we currently face as a global community. And, given the scope of priority areas identified, the benefits of working more closely with The Alan Turing Institute will be felt, not only by the Oden Institute community, but across UT campus.”

Mark Girolami, Program Director of Data-Centric Engineering said: “This is an important and significant new collaboration for The Alan Turing Institute. The unique combination of the computational and data centric engineering expertise of the Oden and Turing Institutes will create exciting opportunities for innovative and impactful research outcomes. Indeed working with the Oden Institute will allow our research teams to effectively address a range of pressing global challenges, such as achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions, and improving the quality of air we breathe in our major cities.”

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