The Insight Centre for Data Analytics at NUI Galway was founded in 2003 as DERI (Digital Enterprise Research Institute) and incorporated into the nationwide Insight Centre for Data Analytics in July 2013.
Its most recent peer review, conducted by the main funder Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), concluded that the science and technology application of the institute were “impressive” and “world class”. Today the Insight Centre for Data Analytics institute at NUI Galway hosts in excess of 100 members and has established itself as a top player worldwide in the areas of Web Science, Semantic Web and Linked Data.
The institute has acquired direct research awards in excess of €60 million from SFI, Enterprise Ireland (EI), and EU framework programmes. It has developed and successfully implemented a research strategy around the goal of “Enabling Networked Knowledge”, which aims at capitalizing on knowledge as the fuel for the digital service economy, by linking information and exploiting the resulting knowledge graphs as the basis for economic productivity. The institute performs fundamental and applied research in a range of research areas to enable this, including data streams and sensor networks, knowledge discovery, natural language processing, social semantics and social network analysis, among others.
Research outcomes are applied in use cases in a range of domains, including eLearning, eGovernment, eBusiness and financial services, eHealth, Green & Sustainable IT, and Life Sciences. These use cases have been implemented with more than 100 industry and public partners in collaborative projects, resulting in more than 1,000 peer-reviewed papers and open source software with millions of users and organisations world-wide including the Irish Central Statistics Office, the UK Data.gov.uk site, the United States Government Data portal data.gov, the European Commission, Yahoo!, Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, and many others.
Technology developed by the institute is driving 100,000s of Websites (for example in the Content Management System Drupal) and is installed on countless desktops (as some of its developed technology is part of any Linux installation). Institute members actively participate in 17 standardisation activities (W3C, OASIS). The Insight institute at NUI Galway has been very successful in acquiring EU funding.
To date the institute has participated in 8 IPs, 17 STREPs, 4 NOEs, 2 CA, 2 CIP PSPs, 1 MC, 2 COST Actions, and 4 other EC funding programmes, with total funding of €21.4 million since 2003. Additionally, the institute has been successful in attracting over €61M from National funding sources, including from EI, SFI, IRCSET and direct industrial collaborations. In total Insight has attracted direct research awards in excess of €82 million from SFI, Enterprise Ireland (EI), and EU framework programmes.