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

降低发展中国家贫困程度的最有效方法是通过持续的经济增长，从而提高人均收入水平。然而，为了保持竞争力，一个发展中经济体需要拥有一支技能越来越精湛的劳动力队伍。对于今天的泰国来说，这意味着能够实现创新的技能，使其能够与其他发展中和发达经济体竞争。随着越来越多的行业收集关于其客户、生产线、分销网络、股票价格等的数据，这些“高级”技能中最关键的一项是处理大量数字数据的能力。然而，就目前而言，泰国学生缺乏对非常大的数据集的现成访问，这阻碍了他们在这一领域的培训。我们的项目通过将英国天文学家在超大型数据集上的资源和经验与泰国数据科学家在数字数据分析方面的技能相结合来解决这个问题。通过这一合作，泰国学生将获得天文测量形式的海量数字数据。在泰国和英国合作伙伴的监督下，学生们将开发出自动分析这些数据的软件，并在这样做的过程中获得处理大量数字数据的重要经验。此外，学生们的研究产生的软件将成为英国天文学家正在开发的一种新望远镜数据处理管道的重要组成部分，因此将直接造福于英国科学。项目完成后，泰国学生获得的技能将很容易转移到不同的经济部门，如信息技术、医药、金融、安全等，从而帮助泰国进一步发展经济。

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.