The British High Commission in New Zealand is pleased to announce that it will host a UK-to-NZ mission on Big Data to visit Wellington and/or Auckland, New Zealand around 17 to 20 February, 2015.
A UK Big Data mission will support commercially-orientated collaborative research in New Zealand’s emerging big data, complex systems, and applications research sector. The mission will coincide with two New Zealand conferences on Big Data.
The first conference (www.multicoreworld.com/) will be held in Wellington. Entitled Multicore, it will include Computing for SKA (Square Km Array telescope) in New Zealand. Now on its 4th edition, world experts will come together for two days of sessions in high-technology evolution and its applications. Collocated with Multicore (17-18 February) is the workshop “HPC in the Cloud -the case of the SKA” (19-20 February). More details should be announced soon on the conference website. Note, the High Commission will also shortly announce a mission on ‘Sensors in the Built Environment’.
The second conference on Neuro-Computing and Evolving Intelligence (NCEI’15 www.kedri.aut.ac.nz/events/all-events )will be held at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), 19-20 February 2015 in the Sir Paul Reeves Building, 2 Governor Fitzroy Place in, Auckland. The theme of the conference is ‘Intelligence Information Technology for Big Data’ and topics will include:
- Novel methods of computational intelligence,
- Neurocomputing and neuroinformatics, Bioinformatics,
- Data mining and decision support, Pattern Recognition and the Study of Creativity.:
- Big and Stream Data Analytics
- Spiking Neural Network Computation
- High Performance Neuromorphic System
- Novel Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI)
- Novel Motion Data Analysis Technology
- Predictive Personalised Modelling of non-Communicable Diseases
- Predicting Response to Treatment
- Personalised Modelling in Bioinformatics
- Predictive Modelling on Ecological and Environmental Data
- Big Data in Radio-Astronomy
- Computer Vision and Image Processing for Dynamic Data Analysis
- Visualisation of Scientific Data
- Novel Human-Computer Interfaces
- Complex System Optimisation
- Collaborative and Distributed Systems Design
Some funding (up to £1500) will be available to some 4 UK R&D participants who seek to pursue a commercially-orientated collaboration with NZ (on a first-come basis for those who qualify). You are encouraged to register and attend one or both conferences according to your interests. Registration details should be available from the websites in the near future.
Please respond to the questions below and e-mail Steve.Thompson@fco.gov.uk if you would be interested to join the mission.
Questions for UK applicants:
- Name and position of applicant:
- Applicant’s organisation name and address:
- Nature of your organisation’s business and R&D interest:
- Organisations you would like to meet in New Zealand:
- Types of R&D collaboration you wish to pursue in NZ, and potential contacts
- Any other comments.
Further Information
You may also wish to visit organisations of interest in New Zealand before or after the meetings, and the High Commission will be pleased to assist in making the necessary contacts and arrangements.
You will need to book your own travel and accommodation. We understand that the Expedia website sometimes offers good deals on flights to NZ. Try the conference website and the Wotif site for a good overview of Auckland and Wellington hotels. You will also find useful information about New Zealand business and travel at http://www.newzealand.com/uk/.
Participants will need to follow a Claims procedure. One way to do this, once you have (for example) been approved for funding and bought your air ticket for £1500 or more, will be to claim as soon as purchased, from BIS (Business, Innovation and Skills) in London. Flights count as one of the acceptable pre-payments. Note: if you travel above premium economy, you will need to show the premium economy price and claim only for that portion.
New Zealand uses 230 volts AC at 50 Hz. Plugs are Australian type with slanting pins. New Zealanders do not generally follow the custom of giving a tip to waiters, taxi drivers, and other service people.
The Consumer Data Research Centre at Leeds is pleased to offer two R courses in September, comprising of an introductory and a more advanced course. The courses will take place in their newly opened training suite at the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics.