Newton STFC-NARIT: Using astronomy surveys to train Thai researchers in Big Data analysis

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The most effective way of reducing levels of poverty in developing countries is through their continued economic growth, which leads to increased levels of income per person. To remain competitive, however, a developing economy needs access to a workforce with increasingly sophisticated skills. For Thailand today, this means skills that enable innovation, allowing it to compete against other developing and developed economies. With more and more sectors collecting data on their customers, production lines, distribution networks, stock prices, etc., one of the most crucially needed of these "high-level" skills is the ability to handle large amounts of digital data. However, as present, Thai students lack ready access to very large datasets, which prevents their training in this area. Our project addresses this problem by combining the resources and experience of UK astronomers of very large datasets, with the skills of Thai Data Scientists in digital data analysis. Through this collaboration, the Thai students will gain access to a vast amounts of digital data in the form of astronomical surveys. Working under the supervision of the Thai and UK partners, the students will develop software that will automatically analyse this data and, in doing so, gain important experience in handling vast quantities of digital data. Furthermore, the software resulting from the students' research will form an important component of the pipeline used to process data from a new telescope being developed by UK astronomers, and will thus directly benefit UK science. On completion of the project, the skills acquired by the Thai students will be readily transferrable to a diverse range of economic sectors such as information technology, medicine, finance, security, etc., thereby helping the further economic development of Thailand.