Data – the key to success
Data permeates every aspect of our lives and is an integral part of any research work. To ensure that ETH Zurich can consolidate its strong position in this important developing field, the university will be stepping up its activities significantly in a number of areas.
As a society, we are producing data faster than ever before. This raises a number of obvious questions: What do we do with all this data? How do we process it? What information can we obtain from it? And not least: how is this data secured and protected? If you can answer these questions, you have a crucial advantage in today's digital society. This is why the new interdisciplinary field of data science is becoming more and more important.
A great opportunity
Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that ETH Zurich plans to secure itself a prominent position in this key field as one of the Switzerland’s leading institutions for computer science – not least as a demonstration of its social responsibility. “Here in Switzerland, we have a unique opportunity to establish a high-performing industry in the IT sector which could be just as significant for our country as the pharmaceutical industry is today,” says ETH President Lino Guzzella. It is clear to him that ETH Zurich is going to play an active role in shaping the digital transformation that will dramatically change our lives in so many ways over the next few years. The university's contributions will help to make good on the social and economic opportunities offered by digitalisation.
As in other areas of life, the new possibilities of information processing are having an impact on the field of research as well. Situated at the interface between data management, statistics, machine learning, information theory and algorithms, the methods of data science find applications in numerous fields, from social and economic studies to health, environmental and engineering sciences. Researchers in all of these fields hope to gain new insights into previously undiscovered relationships by analysing large volumes of data.
Learning systems and information security
In concrete terms, ETH Zurich is focusing on three areas: firstly, learning systems. Together with the Max Planck Society in Germany, ETH has founded the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems, which studies the principles of the intelligent systems of the future. The work of the researchers at the Center covers areas such as the statistical bases of complex systems, the development and control of autonomous systems, the intelligent behaviour of machines and reliable perception in complex situations. The Center also researches the development of robots on a micrometre or nanometre scale and studies artificial nerve systems.
The second important pillar is the Zurich Information Security and Privacy Center (ZISC), with which the university is hoping to make its mark in the field of data and information security. Collaborations with various industry partners are helping to ensure the success of this project. Recently, for example, the infrastructure service provider SIX and Swiss Post became partners of the Center. The spectrum of topics studied at the ZISC is broad. It ranges from concrete issues such as the security of mobile phones to the ambitious SCION project (Scalability, Control, and Isolation on Next-Generation Networks), in which ETH researchers are aiming to achieve nothing less than the creation of a new, solid foundation for the internet itself.
New approaches to data processing and analysis
ETH Zurich's third area of focus is the field of data processing and analysis. In collaboration with EPFL, the university opened the Swiss Data Science Center in February 2017. There will soon be 30 to 40 computer scientists and data scientists working there to make the findings and techniques from the field of data science accessible to other fields. The idea is to close the gap between those who produce data, those who develop data analysis tools, and those who could potentially benefit from this work.
For the researchers at the Center, the first step is to develop an innovative cloud-hosted platform for analyses, known as the “Erkenntnisfabrik” (“Insights Factory”). This will provide a one-stop shop in which organised, calibrated, anonymised data can be hosted, studied and analysed. The researchers' project will also benefit from the existing infrastructure – for example, the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in Lugano and the technology and service platform for Swiss universities (SWITCH).
New study opportunities
The Swiss Data Science Center was founded as a result of the initiative for data science, which was launched by the ETH Board 18 months ago. The aim of the initiative is to expand the education, research and infrastructure opportunities available to scientists who work in the field of data science, and to guarantee the provision of these opportunities in the long term. It is also thanks to the initiative that a new Master’s degree programme in data sciences was launched at ETH this September.
As well as providing in-depth information about analysing and handling large volumes of data, this course will also provide specialised knowledge in a particular field of application. “We want our students to learn how to exploit the potential of large data volumes effectively and responsibly in different application contexts,” says Andreas Krause, Professor at the Institute for Machine Learning and Academic Co-Director of the Swiss Data Science Center. A central element is therefore the Data Science Laboratory, where students solve problems that arise in interdisciplinary applications. This gives them first-hand experience of how challenging it is to obtain meaningful insights from a huge mountain of real data.