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Staff Profile

Professor Paul Watson

Director of the the National Innovation Centre for Data, Professor of Computer Science

  • Address: School of Computing
    Urban Sciences Building
    Newcastle University
    1 Science Square
    Newcastle Helix
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE4 5TG
Background

Paul Watson FREng FBCS CEng PhD is Director of the UK's National Innovation Centre for Data and Professor of Computer Science at Newcastle University. He also directs the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Cloud Computing for Big Data. After a BSc and PhD at Manchester University, he began his career there as a lecturer before moving to industry (ICL) to design parallel database servers. In 1995 he joined Newcastle University where his research and teaching has focussed on scalable data engineering. From 2009-15 he directed the UKRI Social Inclusion for the Digital Economy Hub that tackled social exclusion by designing digital technologies to help people and communities, including older people and those with disabilities. Professor Watson is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a Chartered Engineer. He received the 2014 Microsoft Jim Gray eScience Award.

Research

Paul Watson's research is in scalable information management. Interest in the potential of data science to transform research, and enable companies to launch new data-driven products and services, has created challenges in how to store, share and analyse the vast amounts of data now being collected. We are working on large-scale systems that can extract value from this data:


- Streaming Data Analytics. Sensors are now generating vast quantities of data - extracting value from them requires new tools and techniques that combine statistics and computing to find and act on important patterns in the data. We work on systems that start with a declarative description of the functional and non-functional requirements, and work out how to map the computation across distributed infrastructure, including healthcare monitors, field gateways and clouds. Here's a paper on some of our work - it shows how this approach can dramatically extend the battery life of wearables.


- Exploring how advanced technologies can improve the lives of those from vulnerable groups, including older people, disabled people, and marginalised youth. Paul directed the £12M Social Inclusion through the Digital Economy" (SiDE) project which aims to  realise the potential of digital technologies to transform the lives of those who are excluded. This drove much of our work on cloud computing as SiDE made heavy use of sensor-based systems which generate large amounts of data that must be analysed in order to understand human behaviour, often in real-time. Today, this is driven by work in projects such as Mobilise-D that are using data science to improve the lives of those suffering from a range of conditions including Parkinson's, Multiple Sclerosis and COPD.


Teaching

Paul Watson co-directed the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Cloud Computing for Big Data.

Publications