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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/T022493/1
Title: Horizon: Trusted Data-Driven Products
Principal Investigator: Koleva, Professor B
Other Investigators:
Fischer, Professor J Goulden, Dr M Preston, Dr SP
Crabtree, Professor A Adolphs, Professor S Watson, Professor N
Hollis, Professor C McAuley, Professor D Greenhalgh, Professor C
Bakalis, Professor S Torres Torres, Dr M Flintham, Dr M
Martindale, Dr SE Perez Vallejos, Professor E Pinchin, Dr JT
Spence, Dr A Goulding, Dr JO Townsend, Professor E
Smith, Professor AP Rodden, Professor T Benford, Professor S
Sharples, Professor S Wagner, Professor C Reeves, Dr S
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
5Rights ARM Ltd B3 Media
BBC BlueSkeye AI LTD British Games Institute (BGI)
Broadway Media Centre Capital One Bank Plc City Arts Nottingham Ltd
Defence Science & Tech Lab DSTL Dept for Bus, Energy & Ind Strat (BEIS) Dept for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Digital Catapult East Midlands Special Operations Unit eNurture Network
Experian Financial Conduct Authority Galinsky Works LTD
Hot Knife Media InfoSys Technologies Ltd Integrated Transport Planning
Internet Society Ipsos-MORI Jacobs Douwe Egberts UK Production Ltd
Kino Industries Ltd Live Cinema Ltd MOZES (Meadows Ozone Energy Services)
NCC Engagement and Consultation NIHR MindTech HTC Nottingham City Council
Nottingham Contemporary Ltd CCAN Nottingham Lakeside Arts OLIO Exchange Ltd.
Ordnance Survey PepsiCo Siemens
Unilever University of Cambridge XenZone
Department: Horizon Digital Economy Research
Organisation: University of Nottingham
Scheme: Standard Research
Starts: 08 December 2020 Ends: 07 December 2025 Value (£): 4,075,506
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Computer Graphics & Visual. Computer Sys. & Architecture
Human-Computer Interactions Information & Knowledge Mgmt
Manufact. Business Strategy Mobile Computing
Socio Legal Studies
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Manufacturing Financial Services
Healthcare Creative Industries
Retail Information Technologies
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
12 Feb 2020 EPSRC Nxt Stg DE Int 20192020 Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
The Horizon institute is a multidisciplinary centre of excellence for Digital Economy (DE) research. The core mission of Horizon has been to balance the opportunities arising from the capture, analysis and use of personal data with an awareness and understanding of human and social values. The focus on personal data in a wide range of contexts has required the development of a broad set of multidisciplinary competencies allowing us to build links from foundational algorithms and system to issues of society and policy. We follow a user-centred approach, undertaking research in the wild based on principles of open innovation.

Horizon now encompasses over 50 researchers, spanning Computing, Engineering, Law, Psychology, Social Sciences, Business and the Humanities. It has grown a diverse network of over 200 external partners who are involved in ongoing collaborative research and impact with Horizon, ranging from major international corporations to SMEs, from a wide variety of sectors, alongside government and civil society groups. We have also established a CDT in the third wave of funding that will eventually deliver 150 PhDs. Our critical mass of researchers, partners, students and funding has already led to over 800 peer-reviewed publications, composed of: 277 journal articles, 51 books and book chapters, and 424 conference papers, in a total of 15 different disciplines.

Over the years Horizon's focus has evolved from an emphasis on the collection and understanding of personal data to consider the user-centred design and development of data-driven products. This proposal builds on our established interdisciplinary competencies to deliver research and impact to ensure that future data-driven products can be both co-created and trusted by consumers.

Core to our current vision is the idea that future products will be hybrids of both the digital and the physical. Physical products are increasingly augmented with digital capabilities, from data footprints that capture their provenance to software that enables them to adapt their behaviour. Conversely, digital products are ultimately physically experienced by people in some real-world context and increasingly adapt to both. This real-world context is social; hence the data is social and often implicates groups, not just individuals. We foresee that this blending of physical and digital will drive the merging of traditional goods, services and experiences into new forms of product. We also foresee that - just as today's social media services are co-created by consumers who provide content and data - so will be these new data-driven products. At the same time, we are also witnessing a crisis of trust concerning the commercial use of personal data that threatens to undermine this vision of data-driven products. Hence, it is vitally important to build trust with consumers and operate within an increasingly complex regulatory environment from the earliest stages of innovating future products.

Our user-centred approach involves external partners and the public in "research-in-the-wild", grounding our fundamental research in real world challenges. Our delivery programme combines a bottom-up approach in which researchers are given the opportunity (and provided with the skills) to follow new impact opportunities in collaboration with partners as they arise (our Agile programme), with a top-down approach that strategically coordinates how these activities are targeted at wider communities (our Campaigns programme, with successive focus on Consumables, Co-production and Welfare), and reflective processes that allow us to draw out broader conclusions for the widest possible impact (our Cross-Cutting programme).

Throughout we aim to continue to develop the capacity in our researchers, the wider DE research community and more broadly within society, to engage in responsible innovation using personal data within the Digital Economy.

Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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Organisation Website: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk