Smart Data Foundry launches £300,000 fellowships project 

The Smart Data Foundry (SDF) has announced the launch of the Financial Data Service (FINDS) Fellowships to support research aimed at addressing the UK's most pressing economic, societal and health challenges.  

The project, which has a total budget of £300,000, will provide support for researchers to create impactful, policy-relevant research into major societal issues like child poverty and public health.  

“I’m delighted to be announcing the launch of our FINDS Fellowships,” said Dougie Robb, chief executive of SDF. “This funding will empower researchers to integrate smart financial data into studies tackling key challenges, from productivity and prosperity to health, wellbeing, and sustainability.” 

The Fellowships will have access to FINDS’ unique database of financial data. The data, which is collected in collaboration with major financial institutions, including the NatWest Group and the Financial Conduct Authority, is used to understand the economic dynamics at play in people’s lives.  

“We aim to support three to four innovative projects that not only demonstrate the transformative potential of smart data in research but also generate insights that contribute to real-world impact and improved lives,” said Robb.  

The SDF was established in 2022 to tackle issues like poverty and inequality using data collected by FINDS. Through FINDS, the SDF can securely access the anonymised banking and finance data of 5.3m UK customers, with data from tens of thousands of small businesses included as well. 

Using FINDS, researchers can access de-identified microdata and curated data collections that cover a range of financial variables from income categories like salary and investment data to expenditures like gambling and travel costs. The system can also track a single individual over a five-year period, supporting the identification of trends and generating insights into spending patterns and economic challenges. 

Based at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, the SDF is a University of Edinburgh subsidiary company that operates as an independent, not-for-profit organisation. Funding for these Fellowships comes from £3m award granted to the SDF from Smart Data Research UK, announced earlier this year.   

To ensure users’ security, the SDF operates as a Trusted Research Environment, where rigorous protocols are implemented to ensure the ethical usage and storage of data. 

The infrastructure for this secure data storage is provided by the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) at the University of Edinburgh. The EPCC is the site of the UK’s next generation supercomputer, funded with a grant of £750m by the UK Government and forecast to come online in 2027.