University of Tartu joined the European Big Data Value Association

On 14 November, the Board of Directors of Big Data Value Association (BDVA) – a network of enterprises, research institutions and other public sector organisations who collect, process big data and use it in product development – approved the University of Tartu as its full member. BDVA was launched in 2014 and collaborates as a partner to the European Commission in implementing the big data research programme within the Horizon 2020 framework.

BDVA membership enables the University of Tartu’s big data research groups to participate in the thematic work groups and calls for applications within the network. Thereby it is possible to significantly enhance the opportunities to take part in external projects and find new contacts and partners among the major industrial enterprises and research institutions of Europe.

BDVA has currently 207 members and in addition to information exchange between the partners, the organisation is also engaged in research on data-driven business applications and services, and in data portals and software solutions. In rapidly developing areas like personalised medicine, smart energy and transport solutions and remote monitoring services, more and more data and more diverse data are used increasingly faster. The competitiveness of enterprises depends increasingly more on how they can improve their production, marketing or maintenance services in real time based on feedback from users or devices. For governments and local authorities, the use of big data gives innovative opportunities to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of public sector services.

All research groups of the University of Tartu can join the BDVA work groups. Currently, the Big Data Research Group of the Institute of Computer Science and the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies collaborate with BDVA, but researchers of all faculties who use big data in their work are welcome to participate.

Vice Rector for Research Kristjan Vassil said that those who participate in partnership projects have a clear competitive advantage in applying for Horizon 2020 grants, and they are more successful. “For example, Estonia with its advanced e-government and public registers and data has a unique possibility of being a very attractive partner and an experimental platform for European enterprises and research institutions. Besides public databases we also have excellent research groups who work on developing machine learning and artificial intellect, and valorising big data,” said Vassil.

With the current Horizon 2020 and the future EU R&D framework programmes Horizon Europe and Digital Europe, the European Commission invests more than 25 billion euros in ICT research and development, incl. a considerable part of it through the collaboration platforms of enterprises and research institutions. BDVA intends to join the European initiative for the development of high-performance data processing (EuroHPC) and recently published a supporting position on setting up a European public-private sector partnership on AI in the 2021–2027 budget period.

More information is available on www.bdva.eu. Information on how to join the work groups is available from Grant Office.

Further information: Vallo Mulk, Senior Specialist for International R&D Cooperation, vallo.mulk@ut.ee