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On the 27th November it was announced that 15 leading researchers from several UK institutes have been awarded Turing AI Acceleration Fellowships, named after AI pioneer Alan Turing – researchers from the Turing institute included.

The fellowships are being supported by a £20 million investment from the government to accelerate and tackle some of today’s most pressing challenges such as, researching and providing efficient ways of diagnosing and treating life-threatening diseases like cancer, as well as looking into ways of preventing and eliminating climate change.

Science Minister Amanda Solloway stated: “The UK is the birthplace of AI and we have a duty to equip the next generation of Alan Turing’s with the tools that will keep the UK at the forefront of this remarkable technological innovation.

The inspirational fellows we are backing today will use AI to tackle some of our greatest challenges head on, transforming how people live, work and communicate, cementing the UK’s status as a world leader in AI and data.”

The investment which is being delivered by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will support and transform the careers of some of the brightest and most ambitious researchers as well as look to introduce ground-breaking AI innovation.

Although the fellowships are going to be led by Doctors and Professors from several different universities, it will also see a collaboration between academia and industry, as each fellow will be bringing together a wide range of partners to allow the projects to be worked on in an efficient time-scale to introduce the much-anticipated, transformative AI technologies.

Some of the successful researchers include Turing Fellows Professor Christopher Yau, Professor Giovanni Montana, Dr Adrian Weller, Dr Theo Damoulas and Dr Jose Miguel Hernandez Lobato who explain what their main focus is going to be throughout the five years of the award.

Professor Christopher Yau, The Co-Director of the Health Data Research UK – Turing Wellcome PhD Programme in Health Data Science: clinAlcan – Developing Clinical Applications of Artificial Intelligence for Cancer at the University of Manchester aims to develop AI-driven predictive models that allow us to describe how cancers evolve at a molecular level.

On the Turing’s article regarding the fellowships, they state that ‘through collating copious information from high-resolution molecular profiles of several cancers and embedding the biology of cancer within AI models, Yau will develop intelligent systems that can produce realistic and interpretable predictions for the progression of cancers. This will help to improve the efficiency of drug development and decisions on treatment, and provide patients with more information about their illness. ‘

Professor Yau said, “I am very excited to have been awarded this Fellowship which will enable me to conduct ground-breaking research at the intersection of geonomics and artificial intelligence. Genomics will yield unprecedented amounts of data which necessitate the use of AI for their interpretation. “I will be developing novel clinical information systems to provide cancer patients and clinicians with the very best geonomics-guided personalised care to improve treatment effectiveness and survival rates. I am especially pleased to be working with a range of project partners, including Ovarian Cancer Action, to ensure that my research is conducted in partnership with patients.”

If the research and project succeeds then this will bring a revolutionary way of working for the health professionals to understand cancer much more accurately, as well as at a much earlier stage - which in turn will increase the chance of saving lives as treatment given in the early stages is much more successful in tackling the disease.

With a primary focus on Healthcare and criminal justice also, Dr Adrian Weller, the Turing’s Programme Director for AI: Trustworthy Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge is looking into machine learning and the huge opportunities it provides for society, but also the risks that it may introduce - such as embedding unfair biases or creating new vulnerabilities.

On the Turing’s Institute article they state that ‘Dr Weller’s work will build solid technical underpinnings for trustworthy machine learning via new theory and practical algorithms, focusing on three key measures: fairness, interpretability and robustness. The work will examine applications in criminal justice and healthcare – two domains with high-stakes decisions and clear outcome goals where algorithms are rapidly being introduced – and will help strengthen the UK’s position as a world leader in responsible AI.”

In a bid to truly understand and predict real-life situations regarding climate change, Dr Theo Damoulas, University of Warwick and the Turing’s Deputy Programme Director for Data-Centric Engineering: Machine Learning Foundations of Digital Twins ‘aims to establish the machine learning foundations for AI-enabled digital twins: digital representations of objects and systems that are tied to their physical ‘twins’ via data streams, and which allow researchers to simulate and evaluate ‘what if?’ scenarios to inform real-world decisions.

‘The principles and advances from this research will be demonstrated in environmental and urban digital twins that allow us to better understand and predict air pollution over cities, providing useful information for policy-making and mitigation.’

There is currently five fellowships under-way which have previously been awarded by the government after the major investment in AI skills and research which was announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson back in October 2019.

https://www.turing.ac.uk/news/researchers-alan-turing-institute-awarded-turing-ai-acceleration-fellowships https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55099620