Information Age has announced their top 50 people and organisations at the forefront of data innovation in the UK:
“The prestigious Data 50 list was whittled down from more than 200 nominations and shines a light on those transforming organisations, enhancing decision-making and driving business value through the use of data, as well as managing its proliferating growth.”
We are thrilled to announce that three people across Digital Science and our portfolio companies have been included in the prestigious list!
Here is what Information Age had to say:
- Martin Szomszor, Head of Data Science, Digital Science
In March 2015, Martin completed the build of an online database and collation of more than 6,500 case studies of the social and economic impact of university research for the Research Excellence Framework. Commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, this was the first attempt in the world to gather and assess information on the socioeconomic impact of publicly funded research. The project provides wholly new information about UK research benefits, initially buried in thousands of documents. Szomszor’s database development and subsequent visualisations have made that information accessible and useful to a much wider group of analysts and researchers.
- Euan Adie, Founder, Altmetric
Euan is at the forefront of the alternative metrics movement in academic research, which is changing the way scientists get credit for their work and how funders and governments assess the value of the research they pay for. Altmetric, the company he founded, delivers data on hundreds of thousands of research articles and other outputs each day to help academics worldwide show the impact of their research. It does this by automatically pulling together and processing large amounts of data from policy makers, scholarly reference managers, newspapers and magazines and social media, then giving them smart ways to visualise and understand it.
- Mark Hahnel, Founder, Figshare
Mark founded a platform for academic researchers to share and get credit for all of the data they create over the course of their career. He has made a significant contribution to the open data movement by providing a free platform for anyone to make data openly available, and spent a significant amount of time over the past four years speaking at various conferences to raise the awareness around open data issues. He has been resolute in his vision throughout and despite resistance from the academic establishment he has helped influence what is now seen as an inevitable move toward open research data.
The 50 winners will be celebrated by the industry’s top players at The Data 50 Awards on 25 February 25th in London, where they will also reveal the winners of ten special ‘Best in Class’ categories. Do check out the rest of the list here and we hope you will join us in congratulating the top 50!
