Research Data Science and its potential impact in Low and Middle

Income countries

Hugh ShanahanHugh.Shanahan@rhul.ac.uk

@hughshanahan

Opportunities for LMIC Researchersfrom the Data Deluge

In many research fields, data becoming more open

Public data gradually becoming more open as well

Placement of sites in LMIC - Square Kilometre Array

Example - Bioinformatics

PBytes of Omic data freely available

Good basic Science can be done just by analysing these data sets

Clear results from test species could be applied to local species

Square Kilometre Array

Array of Radio Telescopes

Most of these to be South Africa

South Africa wants to own thisnot just be the site

1 PByte of data per day

Challenges

Absence/deficit of infrastructureEquipment / Electricity / IT Support; Internet access - though improvingOnline collaboration and communities

Absence/deficit of awareness (leading to funding gap)

Absence/deficit of education and training

Solutions

Provide training through Summer School systemto create cohort of Professionals who cognisant in

Research Data Science

Provide access to cloud computing resources that have the data

OrganisationsCo-chair of Working Group RDA/CODATA Summer Schools

in Data Science and Cloud Computing in the Developing World

RDA - young organisation (<3 years) for Data sharing

CODATA - 40 year old organisation with deep interestin developing world research

Schools in ResearchData Science

Give attendees an introduction to principles behind Data Science and how it can be applied.

Aim to make this a professional qualification

Focus on standards avoid reinvention of the wheel

sharing data

Outline

Vanilla

Flavour

Flavour

Vanilla covers the basics for anyone with BSc/BA

Machine Learning/Statistics

Software Carpentry

Data Carpentry

Infrastructures

Visualisation

Curriculum

Cover topics that represent issues specific to disciplines

Flavoured schools

Examples :- Extreme Data

Life Sciences

Databases/Geospatial

Partners so far

Cloud Computing

Technical solution to infrastructure problem

Cost for individual LMIC researcher is barrier

Free at the point of use cloud facilities

Use case - North African Bioinformatics

Potential user community based in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt

Suggestion - Federated clouds to find resources in “the cracks”.