The Data to Knowledge (D2K) Research Group is an exemplar of cross-disciplinary collaborative research in data science related to health and biomedicine. Human interaction and social context are central to data science design, development and application. Whether through long term (often lifetime) membership of research studies producing and providing raw data, through international collaborative research involving diverse disciplines, or through involvement in the complex, cooperative work enabling s data sharing across disciplinary and international borders, human beings are at the core of data science.

D2K focuses on the design, development and application of studies, methods, tools and infrastructures required to support the generation, management, evaluation and analysis of data and information and their conversion into translatable knowledge and societal impact. Under the lead of Director Professor Madeleine Murtagh and Co-Director Professor Paul Burton, research initiatives span three key areas:

Bioinformatics in the form of methods and tools to promote liberal but socially, ethically and legally acceptable and appropriate access to contemporary biomedical/social data and facilitate their use in driving forward knowledge generation and health translation;

Epidemiology and statistics as applied to the design and harmonization of biobanks and other large scale biomedical studies, and to the development of infrastructures that facilitate data sharing and secure methods for analysis, meta-analysis and record linkage;

Social Science and humanities qualitative methods and social/ethico-legal perspectives to study data generation, governance, utilisation and translation as well as the development of innovative methods to support transdisciplinarity and to facilitate multi-stakeholder engagement and the transformation of data into policy and practice.