Microsoft awards $5 million worth of Azure credits to Alan Turing Institute

Alan Turing Institute (the Turing) is the U.K.’s national center for data science, with its headquarters at the British Library in London. It is a joint venture founded by the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, University College London and Warwick and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Today, Microsoft Research announced that they are giving $5 million worth of Microsoft Azure cloud computing credits to support its research into data science. Researchers will use the Azure to undertake computer-intensive activities such as data analytics at scale, machine learning and data visualization.

Apart from the Azure credits, Dr. Kenji Takeda, Director of the Azure for Research program at Microsoft Research, will be at the Turing every week to develop further collaborative research opportunities and to assist with Azure training for researchers and students.

“Azure cloud services will provide our data scientists with an easily accessible platform where they can prototype ideas with a fast turnaround of results, complementing local computing facilities available in the Institute’s five founding universities, and national resources such as the supercomputer ARCHER supported by EPSRC,” Blake added. “We are delighted that Microsoft is enabling access to Azure cloud services, and supporting this crucial element of our research infrastructure.”

Joseph Sirosh, Corporate Vice President of the Data Group at Microsoft, commented, “We are proud to be working closely with the Alan Turing Institute to show how AI, machine learning and data science can be applied in novel ways to real-world problems. We are excited to be enabling researchers to do their best work by providing access to the state-of-the-art capabilities in Microsoft Azure.”

Jeannette M. Wing, corporate vice president of Microsoft Research, added: “The Alan Turing Institute is a unique place where researchers from the U.K.’s top universities come together to push the boundaries of data science. This partnership with the Alan Turing Institute is a prime example of how Microsoft is investing in the global data science research ecosystem, and we look forward to seeing the results of this collaboration.”