"The Institute for Data Science (IDAS) is Durham's newest University Research Institute (URI). It provides a home for researchers using and driving all flavours of data science, and it enables research beyond the silos of traditional disciplines: IDAS commits to transcending traditional academic boundaries and fostering collaborative innovation."

Data science is a broad church. Bringing together mathematics, statistics, domain expertise and computer science, it has gone mainstream in recent years due to its unprecedented achievements, but also due the fact that it starts to permeate almost every single discipline, including those from arts and humanities, business and social sciences. Hereby, IDAS considers data production (simulation), data analysis (learning), data inference, high-performance computing, high-throughput computing, edge computing, and so forth as integral part of modern sciences. Consequently, data science is found everywhere. While the domain expertise around data science sits within dedicated departments and research institutions, IDAS focuses its operational priorities on three strategic pillars: 

Computational Infrastructure and Methodological Advancement 

It is technological advancement of machinery and software that enables, under the hood, the meteoric rise of data science: Computing is the steam engine behind data science's industrial and societal revolution.

Currently, expertise regarding the development and implementation of data science tools remains predominantly within the purview of large commercial entities, while challenges such as the tight coupling of data production (simulation) with data analysis is infrequently covered well by industry albeit essential to advance in science. 

IDAS is therefore committed to developing a community of practitioners who approach capability-focused data science as an independent field of scholarly inquiry. This initiative shall be guided by the following research imperatives: 

1. Identifying research questions that could be addressed through order-of-magnitude improvements in computational efficiency; 
2. exploring research opportunities enabled by significant expansion of dataset scale beyond current limitations; 
3. determining necessary research advances and infrastructural requirements to achieve such transformative capabilities. 

Ethical and Societal Implications

IDAS acknowledges its responsibility to address the broader implications of advanced data processing and data generation capabilities. Questions concerning ethical considerations, impacts on research ecosystems, effects on daily life, and business applications necessitate cross-disciplinary collaboration and dialogue.  

 Cross-Sector Implementation and Support 

DAS is dedicated to facilitating the development and implementation of novel data science initiatives that integrate multiple disciplines and sectors. To this end, the Institute shall provide: 

1. Strategic seed funding 
2. Event support 
3. Professional workshops and training opportunities 
4. Industry engagement 
5. Institutional resources for project dissemination and knowledge transfer 

Through these coordinated efforts, IDAS will advance Durham's position at the forefront of data science innovation while ensuring that such advances serve the broader academic community and society at large.