Information School News

Information School Senior Lecturer Dr Susan Oman has recently joined the University of Sheffield's Centre for Machine Intelligence, as their new Human-Centric AI Theme Lead. "The CMI is a strategic initiative supported by a £3.64m investment, dedicated to the transformation and acceleration of research, innovation, and teaching on and with AI", says Dr Oman. "I am really excited to be taking one of the four academic theme lead appointments in Human-Centric AI, where I will be working across the CMI and the Faculty of Social Sciences Social Research Institute to engage with these centres and networks to develop a programme of research." Susan's research investigates data, AI, evidence, policy and practice - and how they work for the publics they claim to serve. These are often in relation to specific social policy issues, like ‘well-being’ or ‘inequality’ or ‘digital’. Find out more about this news item here .

“We know that people with disabilities experience a lot of inequities in both their health outcomes and the quality of the healthcare that they receive”, says Dr Denis Newman-Griffis, Lecturer in Data Science at the Information School and co-author of ‘ A roadmap to reduce information inequities in disability with digital health and natural language processing ’, a paper published in PLOS Digital Health. This narrative paper is co-authored by Dr Max Hurwitz, Dr Gina McKernan, Dr Amy Houtrow and Dr Brad Dicianno, with whom Dr Newman-Griffis worked during their post-doctoral research in biomedical informatics at the Department of Physical Medicine Rehabilitation at the University of Pittsburgh. It looks at what the sources and causes of this disparity in care experienced by people with disabilities are. Previous research shows that similar disparities are prevalent across race, class, gender and geographical lines as well, but little work has been done specifically in the area of disabil...

 The pharmaceutical industry, the Higher Education sector and the world of the arts may seem like three very disparate areas but, along with almost all arenas of modern life, all three are heavily entwined with technology. Machine learning, data mining and AI in particular are hot topics in the information and technology spheres right now, and each of the aforementioned sectors has their own way of interacting with it. The AHRC-funded project ‘Patterns in Practice’ - which is led by Senior Lecturer Dr Jo Bates from Sheffield’s Information School, working with Professor Helen Kennedy from the University’s Department of Sociological Studies and Dr Erinma Ochu, Associate Professor of Immersive Media at UWE Bristol, as well as Dr Itzelle Medina Perea and Dr Monika Fratczak working as postdoctoral researchers in the Information School - aims to explore how the beliefs, values and feelings of practitioners from the pharmaceutical, education and arts sectors shape how they engage with mac...

People fall in love if someone or something helps them and makes them feel happy. This can be family, a friend, a pet, a hobby, and even technology. Modern society has fallen in love with data because of astonishing things they can do. People have become fascinated by the convenience that data bring. Data are used as a vital element to develop the technologies that we demand. The recommended movies and videos for you in Netflix and YouTube are the results of algorithms trained on tons of relevant data. ChatGPT, a language model that became sensationally popular recently due to its surprising performance, has also been trained on over 8 million web pages and 300 billion words of data. These advanced technologies are enough to impress people and companies. Accordingly, the belief that data would change the world or decide a company’s life and death at least has been strengthened recent years.  Even aside from the cutting-edge technologies, data affect small decisions of our lives. Le...

More than 60 students on the MSc Data Science programme attended the annual Industry Day on Monday 28th November. The event invites speakers from various sectors in industry to share their experiences with utilising machine learning, AI and data science for applications within their domain.  Dr Lisa Clark, Head of Data Science from Atos, gave the talk "Variety is the spice of Data Science", covering a wide range of projects with government agencies and businesses.  Dr Cass Zhao, University of Sheffield, Department of Computer Science, talked about her PhD experience and how it helped her career as a data scientist and machine learning modeller. Joanna Hemingway, Team Lead of Data Visualisation and André Locher Data Engineering & Analytics Manager , gave a talk on how data science methods are used by Jet2 & Jet2holidays.  Dr Aidan Peppin, Senior Researcher from Ada Lovelace Institute, gave the talk "Careers in social research and public policy", covering a un...

August marks the end of my dissertation, my course and my year at the University of Sheffield, and needless to say, this has been the most exciting year of my life so far. Moving abroad for the first time, and pursuing a postgraduate degree in a field I liked is an achievement I will always remember.  The excitement of studying abroad did, however, come with its own set of difficulties and hardships. Since I had never lived alone before, it was initially difficult for me to balance work, school, and, most importantly, cooking for myself every day. But as the saying goes, you learn best via challenging circumstances, and for me, that was the case. I wouldn't describe myself as a chef, but I do make nice meals (most of the time). This is one of the first pictures I took of this city, and I cannot count the number of times I used to get lost. But now that I even recognise the names of the smaller shops, I have certainly become familiar with this city. Becoming a student ambassador was...

I recently attended a VIP Preview Evening at Bletchley Park (BP) to launch their new exhibition called The Intelligence Factory. This also included a new temporary exhibition called The Art of Data. The new exhibition narrates how the activities at BP turned data into intelligence products that were then used for tactical and strategic decision making by the likes of Churchill. However, it is presented as a factory which not only includes the innovative technologies (e.g. Colossus for codebreaking), but also the organisation and management required to do this effectively. It also shows the need for good data and information management, analytics, visualization and storytelling etc and is a great blueprint for any analytics activities in modern day organisations. David Kenyon from BP came to present at the iSchool a couple of years back on the topic, which was his early thinking about an intelligence factory that eventually helped to this new exhibition. In the Art of Data exhibition th...

  “We rely so much on Google these days”, says Dr Frank Hopfgartner, Senior Lecturer at the Information School and Investigator on the ‘Do You See What I See’ project. “Google has a search engine market share of over 90% worldwide.” Undertaken by Dr Hopfgartner with several fellow members of the Cyprus Center for Algorithmic Transparency (CyCAT) - which was profiled in the research magazine Inform II in 2019 (page 29) - this project aimed to discover the differences in the search results that Google provides to users in different parts of the world. Google states that their mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. This project asked: is that true? Does everyone everywhere have equal access to the same information? And if not, what impact might that have? Dr Frank Hopfgartner “CyCAT for me was very interesting because algorithmic transparency and bias is a very timely topic and one which is receiving a lot of attention”, says ...

Blog: My year as a Data Science student Syeda Gulnoor Zahra  Study sessions in The Diamond will be missed Data Scientist has been classified as the ‘sexiest’ job of the 21st century by the Harvard Business Review. This explains its popularity and hype all around the world. MSc Data Science is also one of the most popular courses offered by the Information School (iSchool) and has a higher eligibility criterion than other courses to ensure the quality of the course. The iSchool at The University of Sheffield has been ranked Number 1 in the UK. Choosing to study this course at iSchool has proven to be one of my best decisions. Hence, I would like to take this opportunity to share my experience with you as both an MSc Data Science student and as a Student Ambassador at The University of Sheffield.  The course offers many interesting and technical modules. Out of which, my favourite ones have been Data Visualization, Database Design, Big Data Analytics and Data Minin...

Digital Data Flows and the COVID-19 Pandemic - should we be paying more attention?  As a third of the global population experiences some form of lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the world are adapting to new ways of living and working, and looking for radical solutions to live with the virus until some form of immunity develops. Digital technologies and the data they process have been central to this response. The production and circulation of digital data is constrained by a complex web of deeply politicised social, cultural, legal, economic and technical factors. These constraints – or, “data frictions” - can be beneficial or problematic, and whether a particular friction is one or the other is often subject to significant debate. Shifts in the nature of data frictions have the potential to influence how societies function at the most fundamental level – they shape the relationship between state and citizens, the management of worker...

New Paper: Integrating FATE/Critical Data Studies into Data Science Curricula: Where are we going and how do we get there? A number of Information School academics have published a new paper for the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. The paper (published by Dr Jo Bates, Dr David Cameron, Dr Alessandro Checco, Professor Paul Clough, Dr Frank Hopfgartner, Dr Suvodeep Mazumdar, Dr Laura Sbaffi, Dr Peter Stordy, and Dr Antonio de la Vega de León) reflects on the ethical and practical aspects of teaching critical data science to inform future data practices & make them fair.  Abstract:  There have been multiple calls for integrating topics related to fairness, accountability, transparency, ethics (FATE) and social justice into Data Science curricula, but little exploration of how this might work in practice. This paper presents the findings of a collaborative autoethnography (CAE) engaged in by a MSc Data Science teaching team b...

Yingshen Huang, from Peking University, China, who is working with Andrew Cox and Laura Sbaffi surveying Chinese universities about research data services, presented their joint work at  the CODATA 2019 Conference, held on 19-20 September in Beijing, China. The conference theme was: “Towards next-generation data-driven science: policies, practices and platforms.” Yingshen Huang presented the paper “Research data management in Chinese academic libraries”.

Two weeks on from #CILIPconf2019 has allowed me plenty of time to reflect on what I learnt over the two whirlwind days. Firstly, if you ever have the opportunity to go… GO! It is friendly and gives you a real taste of a variety of sectors of the profession and creates an atmosphere that is sure to inspire information professionals to go out and make a difference. One of the stand out things I have taken away from the conference was its focus on equality and diversity and that librarianship is overwhelming white… 97% of information professionals in the UK identify as white which is not representative of our society which is 88% (CILIP, 2019).  In her keynote speech, Hong-Anh Nguyen (@DeweyDecibelle) used a quotation from Ed Yong: “I knew that I care about equality so I deluded myself into thinking that I wasn’t part of the problem.  I assumed that my passive concern would be enough.  Passive concern never is.” This struck a chord with me – equality is important to me –...

It was a great honour for me to participate in the two-day CILIP Conference with my lovely Information School classmates in Manchester on July 3. This conference is a major annual event of information experts. I was very grateful to be sponsored by the University of Sheffield to attend this event. Within a limited two-day period, we have gained a lot of industry knowledge, career inspiration, and advanced techniques from talented speakers. It is also a friendly and open platform for discussing and sharing different opinions with other participants. It was a valuable experience in my life. The conference included five topics: big ideas, specialisms, knowledge & information management, skill & technical and career insight. For each topic, there were several seminars and workshops. Among these sessions, I was very interested in the K & IM government seminar led by Dr Derek Shaw, Dr Dominic Davies and Larry Mount. They showed us many actual cases from the Ministry of Defe...

I was so lucky to gain a bursary from the Information School to attend the UK CILIP Conference 2019. It was a great opportunity for me to meet professionals from information-related industries, as well as other students from the Information School. I got to chat with some fantastic people and made friends with other students. The conference involved broad topics related to information and librarianship, such as Artificial Intelligence, Diversity and Data Behaviour, which allowed every attendee to find topics they were interested in. Attending different sessions of the conference sparked many new ideas and different ways of thinking regarding leadership skills needed by information professionals, which are so important for a future career. This blog will focus on what kind of skills recruiters are looking for from information professionals, based on three experts’ views. According to Sally Connor, who is a senior analyst from PWC, it is vital to have strategic thinking and always as...