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# Alan Turing Institute Engagement Opportunities

The Turing Institute is set up with sector specific [research programmes](https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/research-programmes), such as the [Health and Medical Sciences research programme](https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/research-programmes/health-and-medical-sciences), which is what the Turing-Roche strategic partnership sits under.

There are also cross-cutting programmes such as Public Policy, Safe and Ethical AI, and [Tools, Practices and Systems (TPS) programme](https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/research-programmes/tools-practices-and-systems).
TPS is focused on building open source infrastructure and is the programme I'm based in as Communuity Manager.

I've included opportunities from across these research programmes and beyond, where we can explore potential collaborations and what might be of interest to the Roche data science community.

I'll curate and pass on any opportunities that I feel are relevant to Roche on a regular basis, as well as featuring them in the Turing-Roche newsletter.

## Events

General Turing Institute events are listed [here](https://www.turing.ac.uk/events).
Upcoming events are listed regularly.
Often, past event pages provide a short overview of the outcome and the recordings are posted on the [Turing YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/c/TheAlanTuringInstituteUK).

### Tools, Practises and Systems (TPS) Seminar Series

The [TPS seminar](https://www.turing.ac.uk/events/tools-practices-and-systems-monthly-meet) takes place on the last Wednesday of every month and is attended by a broad audience from the Turing. We have had some great external speakers such as Digital Public Goods Alliance and OpenMined and would welcome a speaker from Roche. Our research project manager for TPS, Arielle Bennett (email: [e-mail]) would be able to advise on topics of interest.

### AI-UK - Turing's Annual Conference

Next March 2022, The Turing Institute will host a flagship two-day conference [AI UK 2022](https://www.turing.ac.uk/ai-uk), showcasing the latest developments in artificial intelligence (AI) research, applied to the most pressing challenges across multiple disciplines.

Conference themes will be structured around the [National AI Strategy](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-ai-strategy), alongside topical sessions focused on relevant trends in the AI and data science field. We'll be exploring questions such as:
- What is the role of AI and data science in climate change mitigation?
- Faster, fitter, better: is AI making us more efficient?
- Is AI making the progress it promised?

I will share updates on registration and speaking opportunities- you can currently submit a proposal for the conference [here](https://www.turing.ac.uk/ai-uk).

## Interest Groups

[Interest groups](https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/interest-groups) allow researchers at the Turing to develop knowledge around a shared interest in data science and/or AI. Most are open for external people to join and if not clear then the organiser of the group is always happy to be contacted.

Some that may be potentially of interest:

* [Omics data generation and analysis group](https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/interest-groups/omics-data-generation-and-analysis-group)
* [Vizualisation](https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/interest-groups/visualization)
* [Data Science Education](https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/interest-groups/data-science-education)
* [Causal Inference](https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/interest-groups/causal-inference)
* [Facilitating Responsible Participation in Data Science](https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/interest-groups/facilitating-responsible-participation-data-science)

## Open Research Projects

### The Turing Way

[The Turing Way](https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/welcome) is a guide to reproducible data science and beyond: providing information that researchers and data scientists in academia, industry and the public sector need to ensure that the projects they work on are easy to reproduce and reuse. The book launched in January 2019 and now has a large collaborative community contributing to it.

We would love to have any contributions to the Turing Way from the Roche Community. We would also be more than happy to introduce the Roche community to the Turing Way via a talk, workshop or training on computational reproducibility. You can find several ways to join and get involved in The Turing Way listed in [this HackMD](https://hackmd.io/@turingway/demo-intro). Here are some opportunities and events to collaboratively work on The Turing Way book on data science.
- [Slack channel](https://tinyurl.com/jointuringwayslack)
- [co-working calls](https:///the-turing-way.netlify.app/community-handbook/coworking/coworking-weekly.html) - weekly collaboration calls (1 hour)
- [collaboration cafes](https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/community-handbook/coworking/coworking-collabcafe.html) - biweekly onboarding collaboration, quiet working and dicussion calls (2 hours)
- [Book Dash events](https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/community-handbook/bookdash.html) - 1 week long event to work flexibly work with others

### Turing Data Stories

A Turing Data Story is an interactive mix of narrative, code, and visuals that derives insight from real world open data. They are written as pedagogic Jupyter notebooks that aim to spark curiosity and motivate more people to play with data.

The project is collaboratively developed on Github [in this repo](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/TuringDataStories/) and the stories are published online. [Check them out here](https://alan-turing-institute.github.io/TuringDataStories-fastpages/).

Roche researchers are invited to contribute their data stories to share with the Turing community and more widely through this open source platform.

## Data Study Groups (DSG) - collaborative hackathons

[Data Study Groups](https://www.turing.ac.uk/collaborate-turing/data-study-groups) are an event series that bring together some of the country’s top talent from data science, artificial intelligence, and wider fields, to analyse real-world data science challenges.

Organisations act as Data Study Group ‘Challenge Owners’, providing real-world problems to be tackled by small groups of highly talented, carefully selected researchers who brainstorm and engineer data science solutions, presenting their work at the end of the week.

All researchers are given skill training on best practices in data science, project leadership and professional workshops to support them to work in the interface of academia and industry.

All DSGs publish a comprehensive final report (found [here](https://www.turing.ac.uk/collaborate-turing/data-study-groups#reports)) which covers an overview of the dataset(s) used, methodologies, analyses, results and future work. DSG's can be used by challenge owners as a pilot study and often lead to larger projects/collaborations- Roche were previously a challenge owner with the DSG leading to setting up the Turing-Roche strategic partnership.

Any Roche researchers would be welcome to apply to join any future DSG's as researchers. ]

**Contact:** Jules Manser (email: [e-mail])

## Skills & Training

The institute's training teams runs a variety of internal programmes, courses and national activities. Their Github can be found [here](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/learning-at-the-turing).

They are developing a new website which will be launched in early January and will give more information on the activities below. I will link to it here when its up.

### Research Data Science training

The [Research Engineering team](https://www.turing.ac.uk/research-engineering) are close collaborators of the TPS programmme and I feel there may be some overlapping interests with this team and the Roche Advanced Analytics Network (RAAN).

They have developed and delivered [Research Data Science courses](https://alan-turing-institute.github.io/rds-course/) in the past. I will flag any future opportunities as Roche members would be welcome to attend.

**Contact:** Federico Nanni (email: [e-mail])

### The Turing Fellow Programme

Turing Research Fellows are independent researchers, employed by one of the Turing's partner universities and based at the Institute.
They were recruited following success in an internationally competitive process.
The objective of Turing Research Fellows is to develop a personal research programme at the Turing to conduct outstanding, creative and innovative research in data science and artificial intelligence, develop internationally significant outcomes, and play a prominent role in advancing the research programmes of the Institute and its partners, acting as project.

### Opportunities for doctoral students

The Turing offers multiple opportunities for doctoral researchers to work with its community.
An interesting scheme for Roche network is [Enrichment Programme](https://www.turing.ac.uk/work-turing/studentships/enrichment). This will give students undertaking a PhD the opportunity to support and enhance their current research by accessing the facilities and opportunities available at The Alan Turing Institute and its partners. Students usually join us in their second or third years of a typical doctorate to further the work they are undertaking for their research project and support the completion of the PhD.
More info [here](https://www.turing.ac.uk/work-turing/studentships).

## Newsletters

* **The first Turing-Roche newsletter** will be going out in January. We hope it will keep people at both organisations and beyond informed about updates in the partnership as well as featuring relevant events, jobs and opportunities. You can sign up [here](https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/research-projects/alan-turing-institute-roche-strategic-partnership#contact-info). It would be great to get updates from RAAN to include in this.
* **Turing Institute newsletter** goes out monthly and is a digest of latest research and news. Would use mainly for any big Turing-Roche strategic partnership updates but can check with our comms team if we wanted to utilise for other opportunities. [Subscribe here](https://www.turing.ac.uk/contact-us/join-our-mailing-lists).
* **TPS newsletters** go out monthly and cover a range of topics from TPS events, job and collaboration opportunities and TPS project updates. Whilst the majority of the newsletter is related to Turing internal business, we are happy to feature external/news events that would be of interest to the TPS community.
* **Health newsletters** go out once a month to health programme members and feature events, calls and surveys, news articles and jobs. Could utilise for Roche opportunities of interest to health researchers. [Subscribe here](https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/research-programmes/health-and-medical-sciences).
* **The Turing Way newsletter** send monthly reports with upcoming opportunities in the project and open science communities at large. [Subscribe here](https://tinyletter.com/TuringWay/).

## Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)

The Turing Institute launched its first EDI strategy and accompanying action plan in September 2021. You can find the strategy and action plan at the bottom of the page [here](https://www.turing.ac.uk/about-us/equality-diversity-and-inclusion).

Whilst many of the activities are institute based, we will be launching a research programme in 'EDI in data science and AI research' next year which will include research and training programme delivery, and will support sharing of best practice through external stakeholder engagement, community building (internally and externally), knowledge transfer and the seeding of new opportunities.

I will keep you up to date with opportunities in this new programme and other Turing EDI initiatives.

## Potential upcoming opportunities

- **Turing-Crick Data Training for Biosciences**: Masterclasses for senior group leaders. More information will be added soon. See the [GitHub repository](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/data-training-for-bioscience).
- **Data Science and AI Educator programme**: Information will be added soon.