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| Founded | 2015 |
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| Founder | UK Government |
| Type | Research institute |
| Registration no. | England and Wales: 09512457 |
| Focus | Data sciences |
| Location | |
| Membership |
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CEO | Jean Innes |
| Website | www |
The Alan Turing Institute is the United Kingdom's national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, founded in 2015 and largely funded by the UK government. It is named after Alan Turing, [1] the British mathematician and computing pioneer.
The Alan Turing Institute is an independent private-sector legal entity, operating not-for-profit and as a charity. [2] It is a joint venture among the University of Cambridge, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Oxford, University College London (UCL) and the University of Warwick, selected on the basis of international peer review. [3] In 2018, the institute was joined by eight additional university partners: Queen Mary University of London, University of Leeds, University of Manchester, University of Newcastle, University of Southampton, University of Birmingham, University of Exeter and University of Bristol.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the primary funder of the institute, is also a member of the joint venture. The primary responsibility for establishing the Alan Turing Institute has been assigned to the EPSRC, with continuing engagement in the shaping of the institute from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Government Office for Science. The Chair, Doug Gurr, was appointed in 2022, and the CEO, Jean Innes, in 2023. Between 2018 and 2023, the Director and CEO was Sir Adrian Smith. The inaugural Director from 2015 was Andrew Blake (scientist). [4]
Funding for the creation of the institute came from a £600m investment for the "Eight Great Technologies", [5] and specifically so-called "big data", signalled by the UK Government in 2013 [6] and announced by George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the 2014 budget. [7] The bulk of the investment in "big data" was directed to computational infrastructure. Of the remainder, £42m was allocated to the institute to cover the first five years of its operation. [7] The five founder universities each contributed £5m to the institute. [8] Further funding has come primarily through grants from Research Councils, university partners and from strategic and other partnerships. [9]
In June 2021, the EPSRC awarded the institute £10 million, on behalf of UK Research and Innovation, for 2021/22. [10]
The government's 2024 Spring Budget provided a further £100m, spread over five years, directed towards applying data science and artificial intelligence to healthcare, protecting the environment and bolstering national defence. [11] Soon after, a review by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council recommended improvements in financial oversight of funding for the institute. [12]
Concurrently with the selection of founder universities, the EPSRC initiated a process to find a "location partner". The resulting selection of the British Library in London was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in December 2014 during the launch of the Knowledge Quarter, a partnership of organisations in and around the King's Cross area of the capital. [13]
As of 2023, the Alan Turing Institute is housed within the current British Library building, but it is anticipated it will occupy new premises in a development planned on land between the Francis Crick Institute and library. [14] In February 2023 the plans for the new building were approved by the local council. [15]
The Alan Turing Institute was founded following a letter from the Council for Science and Technology (CST) to the UK prime minister (7 June 2013), describing the "Age of Algorithms". The letter presented a case that "The Government, working with the universities and industry, should create a National Centre to promote advanced research and translational work in algorithms and the application of data science".
The Alan Turing Institute fits into a complex organisational landscape that includes the Open Data Institute, the Digital Catapult and infrastructure investments. The role of the institute is to provide the expertise and fundamental research into data science and artificial intelligence needed to solve real-world problems. [9]
The Alan Turing Institute has since 2021 run an annual event called AI UK, [16] which is described as a national showcase of data science and artificial intelligence.
The organisation's intranet is called Mathison, which was Alan Turing's middle name.
In 2015 Lloyd's Register Foundation became the institute's first strategic partner, providing a grant of £10 million over five years to support research into the engineering applications of big data. [8] [17] [18]
In March 2023, the Turing Institute announced a new strategy, dubbed "Turing 2.0". [19] Following the release of the strategy, an all-male team of four senior academics was hired to deliver on the new strategy, leading to a letter signed by 180 staff members to express serious concerns about the institute's approach to diversity and inclusion. [20]
In October 2024, the Institute started a redundancy consultation process, affecting around 140 of the 440 staff members. [21]
In December 2024, 93 employees of the Alan Turing Institute sent a letter to the board of the institute to expresses no confidence in the body's executive leadership and asked the board to intervene. [22] In addition to concerns about gender diversity and the redundancy round, the letter mentions the institute's sense of direction as issues. Furthermore, it outlines how a lack of accountability and transparency, as well as poor decision making by the executive, are leading to a catastrophic decline in trust in leadership and rising levels of stress and burnout across employees. Reportedly, an internal review by the institute mirrors these conclusions. [23]
Kevin Warwick is an English engineer and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Coventry University. He is known for his studies on direct interfaces between computer systems and the human nervous system, and has also done research concerning robotics.
The University of Manchester is a public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester City Centre on Oxford Road. The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, The Whitworth art gallery, the John Rylands Library, the Tabley House Collection and the Jodrell Bank Observatory – a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The University of Manchester is considered a red brick university, a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. The current University of Manchester was formed in 2004 following the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and the Victoria University of Manchester. This followed a century of the two institutions working closely with one another.
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that matches or surpasses human cognitive capabilities across a wide range of cognitive tasks. This contrasts with narrow AI, which is limited to specific tasks. Artificial superintelligence (ASI), on the other hand, refers to AGI that greatly exceeds human cognitive capabilities. AGI is considered one of the definitions of strong AI.
Allen & Overy LLP was a British multinational law firm headquartered in London, England. The firm has 590 partners and over 5,800 employees worldwide. In 2023 A&O reported an increase in revenue to GBP2.1 billion and is the second largest law firm headquartered in the UK by revenue.
Sir Demis Hassabis is a British artificial intelligence (AI) researcher, and entrepreneur. He is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Google DeepMind, and Isomorphic Labs, and a UK Government AI Adviser. In 2024, Hassabis and John M. Jumper were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their AI research contributions for protein structure prediction.
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), formerly the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). UKRI is a non-departmental public body (NDPB) funded by the UK government. ESRC provides funding and support for research and training in the social sciences. It is the UK's largest organisation for funding research on economic and social issues.
Jameel Sadik "Jim" Al-Khalili is an Iraqi-British theoretical physicist and science populariser. He is professor of theoretical physics and chair in the public engagement in science at the University of Surrey. He is a regular broadcaster and presenter of science programmes on BBC radio and television, and a frequent commentator about science in other British media.
Andrew Blake is a British scientist, former laboratory director of Microsoft Research Cambridge and Microsoft Distinguished Scientist, former director of the Alan Turing Institute, Chair of the Samsung AI Centre in Cambridge, honorary professor at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a leading researcher in computer vision.
The Alan Turing Year, 2012, marked the celebration of the life and scientific influence of Alan Turing during the centenary of his birth on 23 June 1912. Turing had an important influence on computing, computer science, artificial intelligence, developmental biology, and the mathematical theory of computability and made important contributions to code-breaking during the Second World War. The Alan Turing Centenary Advisory committee (TCAC) was originally set up by Professor Barry Cooper
Peter Grindrod, CBE is a British mathematician.
Howard Covington is a British investment banker who was a founding shareholder and director of New Star Asset Management. He was also the first non-academic chairman of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences Management Committee and the inaugural chairman of The Alan Turing Institute.
Peter John Kyle is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology since July 2024. A member of the Labour Party, he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hove and Portslade, formerly Hove, since 2015. Kyle previously served as Shadow Minister for Victims and Youth Justice, Shadow Minister for Schools, and Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary.
Wendy Tan White MBE is a British technology entrepreneur and technology investor. She is the CEO of Intrinsic, a robotics software company under Alphabet Inc.
The Knowledge Quarter is a knowledge cluster, situated in a small area of London around King's Cross, the Euston Road and Bloomsbury.
The Henry Royce Institute is the UK’s national institute for advanced materials research and innovation.
Joanna Joy Bryson is professor at Hertie School in Berlin. She works on Artificial Intelligence, ethics and collaborative cognition. She has been a British citizen since 2007.
Christina Pagel is a German-British mathematician and professor of operational research at University College London (UCL) within UCL's Clinical Operational Research Unit (CORU), which applies operational research, data analysis and mathematical modelling to topics in healthcare. She was Director of UCL CORU from 2017 to 2022 and is currently Vice President of the UK Operational Research Society. She also co-leads, alongside Rebecca Shipley, UCL's CHIMERA research hub which analyses data from critically ill hospital patients.
Stephen A. Jarvis is a British computer scientist and academic administrator. He is currently Provost and Vice-Principal at the University of Birmingham. Prior to this he served as pro-vice-chancellor at the university and head of its College of Engineering and Physical Sciences.
Stephen Roberts FREng is a British academic and scientist. He is a professor of machine learning at University of Oxford and leads the Machine Learning Research Group, a sub-group of the Department of Engineering Science.
Guo Yike is a Chinese computer scientist who currently serves as provost of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) since 1 December 2022. He is concurrently a chair professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of HKUST.
51°31′46″N0°07′37″W / 51.52944°N 0.12694°W
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