University of Edinburgh | Smart Society Project

Profile

The University of Edinburgh brings the world leading strength of the School of Informatics. This expertise is reinforced through the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SISCA) a collaboration of leading Scottish universities in computer science. Within the UK, SISCA members hold 20% of UK national ICS research funds against a population of 9% of the UK total. Over half of the Scottish total is held by Informatics at Edinburgh (representing approximately 10% of the UK total). In the UK Research Assessment Exercise 2008 we returned over one hundred researchers in Computer Science and Informatics. Our submission contained more “world leading” and more “internationally excellent” research than any other submission in this unit of assessment. Around this core of research leaders is a research concentration of approximately 400 research staff and PhD students. We also support one of the UK’s most thriving informatics technology transfer organisations which provides dedicated support for commercialisation, entrepeneurialism and technology transfer, in which Edinburgh leads the UK in terms of number of spinout companies in the past decade (according to http://www.spinoutsuk.co.uk/).

Role in the Project

The University of Edinburgh will be a significant participant in the project, involving multiple PIs and researchers. UEDIN will take a leading role in WP6 and WP10, and will contribute to the other work packages bringing in diverse expertise in areas including socio-technical systems, models of social computation, multi-agent reasoning and machine learning. Building on this expertise, UEDIN will contribute substantially to shaping the SmartSociety’s vision and mission across Europe through the engagement of appropriate scientific, industrial and social stakeholders; as well as contributing to outreach activities to key stakeholders.

The University of Edinburgh – School of Informatics official web-page.