The Trans-Atlantic Corpore Sano project (TACS) targeted further development of institutional collaborations in research and higher education between UiT Arctic University of Norway and Cornell University, USA. Concrete efforts included personnel mobility, research, and educational activities at all levels including undergraduates, administration, graduate, post-graduate, and faculty.
Collaboration between computer scientists at both universities has successfully been carried out for over two decades, and TACS strengthened and broadened this collaboration beyond existing personal collaboration. Besides increasing the quality and volume of research and educational efforts in computer science, this project enableded collaboration initiatives with other sciences like, for instance, sport science, law, nutritional science, and medicine.
Simula Research Laboratory and industrial partner Microsoft Development Centre Norway were also involved in this collaboration between Norway and Ivy League university Cornell.
The TACS project has improved and scaled the Cornell-UiT/Simula/OsloMet relatiosnhip in computer science. Also, TACS has broadened the relationship to include sports sciences, nutritional sciences, medicine, and law.
TACS has been instrumental in developing a new inter-disciplinary centre, Corporo Sano Laboratory, focussing on computer forensics, data security, and sustainability through particularly computer science, mathematics, and law. We have raised 40 mill. Nkr starting grant funding directly from industry to build this centre from 2020, and we have a RCN SFI application under evaluation to potentially scale this. Besides the Norwegian TACS partners, Cornell and Microsoft are two US TACS partners deeply involved in this activity.
This project proposal supplements on-going research collaboration between UiT and Cornell University that address fundamental computer science challenges in the Big Data domain. This investigation is carried out as part of the inter-disciplinary Corpore Sano Centre, where we investigate and develop privacy-preserving and robust technological solutions on how to monitor, collect, store, curate, access, combine, and analyze a large variety of existing and emerging data sources.
Medical and elite-sport use-cases receive special attention. Inter-disciplinary use-cases involving Norwegian national level soccer players and real-time epidemiological cohorts (the renowned Tromsø Study) are used to focus this research, but also for practical evaluation purposes. The Norwegian national soccer A-team has been one of our partners using TACS technologies in a scientific context.
This proposal supplements an established Trans-Atlantic research collaboration between UiT and Cornell University, but also includes a select group of high-quality partners. We intend to create a multi-tier framework expanding this successful cooperation between academic environments at the international forefront today. By formalizing and strengthening collaboration between UIT and Cornell in particular, this project has potential to facilitate growth of a world-class and lasting inter-disciplinary research centre hosted by UIT. With our TACS partners, we will apply for a Centre of Excellence in Innovation (SFI) fall 2019 that will be hosted by UiT.
Activities include support for bi-lateral student and faculty mobility; planning, development and delivery of dedicated workshops, seminars, and advance PhD summer schools; mutual curriculum activities; co-advising of PhD student; and industrial post-graduate training.