The UK faces a shortage of skills in managing, visualising, analysing and interpreting large, complex datasets and high rates of data flow. These skills are increasingly needed across a wide range of sectors as complex data analysis underpins many aspects of society. The STFC-funded community, driven by the need to handle the ever-increasing data rates from facilities such as LSST, Euclid, JWST, DKIST and high-performance computing (HPC) generally, is in a strong position to contribute to developing these skills by training a new generation of PhD-qualified data specialists.

To address the data challenges presented by both STFC science and broader society, we have created a Centre for Doctoral Training, NUdata, based in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne and run jointly between Northumbria and Newcastle Universities. Together, the two Universities cover a broad range of STFC science, including planetary, solar physics, heliospheric physics, stellar physics, galaxies, cosmology and particle physics – including both theoretical and observational astrophysics.

Together the Centre has over 30 permanent staff working predominantly under the STFC remit, as well as support from a large contingent of Applied Mathematicians, Statisticians and Computer Scientists. The two Universities hold significant STFC funding, have access to major HPC platforms (DiRAC, NASA Pleiades, Prace) and are involved in many of the next-generation observational platforms (e.g. Parker Solar Probe, DKIST, Solar Orbiter, Euclid, LSST, JWST). A significant fraction of our STFC research is in the area of Data Intensive Science. This includes observational campaigns returning TBs of data per night (LSST/Euclid) and high performance computing, generating hundreds of terabytes (TBs) of data per simulation (cosmological and magnetohydrodynamic simulations). Optimally exploiting this data requires expertise from astrophysics (broadly), statistics and computing. Our Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) has major strengths in all these areas, allowing the CDT to cover the broad skill set required to train the next generation of astrophysicists and data scientists.

In collaboration with industry, we have co-designed and will co-deliver, an STFC CDT in Data Intensive Science. Over the next six years, it will train a new generation of PhD students in the advanced techniques of Data Intensive Science for use within the STFC core science programme, as well as in different sectors of the broader economy. Students completing the programme will end with a PhD in STFC science. Links with our industrial partners (partners) and specialists in other disciplines will ensure that knowledge and skills flow across all relevant sectors. This CDT will provide a key contribution to the levelling up agenda and UKRI’s aim to put the UK at the forefront of the artificial intelligence and the data revolution.