SPA researcher’s €1m grant success

One of SPA’s early career academics is celebrating receiving a European Grant worth more than €1m to explore the ways in which data-intensive science will change research in the digital age.

The funds are aimed at the cream of University researchers in Europe and support ground-breaking research by academics early in their career. Dr Sabina Leonelli will receive an ERC Starting Grant of €1,046,000 to fund her project “The Epistemology of Data-Intensive Science” for five years.

The project aims to develop a new ‘philosophy of data-intensive science’ that clarifies how research practices are changing in the digital age. Phase 1 will investigate how the use of online databases is affecting research practices and outcomes in two areas, plant science and biomedicine. In Phase 2 Dr Leonelli will produce a systematic assessment of the implications of the rise of data-intensive research for how science is organised, conducted and assessed, with far-reaching consequences not only for current scholarship in the philosophy of science, but also for science policy and for scientists’ own understanding of the impact of data-intensive methods on their professional practice.

“'I am delighted with the ERC funding, which will enable me to build a wonderful research group on the philosophy of scientific data and thus expand the already substantial expertise available in Exeter in this area,” says Sabina. “My work will continue to focus on the biological and biomedical sciences but the project will also enable me to collaborate with world-leading scholars specialising on the study of data in other sciences, ranging from archeology to particle physics and climate science. We also plan to set up freely accessible online resources documenting our progress and providing publicly available information on this topic - do follow us on Twitter, @DataScienceFeed.”

Date: 20 August 2013