Francis Crick Institute CIO Alison Davis video interview – Collaboration and data platform

Francis Crick Institute CIO Alison Davis says it is now her focus to ensure Europe’s largest biomedical research lives up to expections following its opening at the end of 2016.

Davis was recognised in the 2017 CIO 100 for her role at The Crick, a state-of-the-art £650 million science facility which has a mission to understand the underlying causes of human health and human disease.

Speaking to CIO UK contributor Scott Carey at the 2017 CIO 100 celebration reception, Davis said that it has been an incredible challenge and privilege to lead the technology and IT function at new site in King’s Cross, where 1500 scientists are based.

As well as keeping the lights on at the new facility, 2016 CIO Summit speaker Davis is pushing forward scientific computing and an innovation agenda to empower The Crick’s scientists to push the boundaries of our knowledge around human health and human disease.

“From my point of view, enabling that is a huge opportunity,” Davis said. “We have an enormous amount of data and one of the crucial things for me is enabling the scientists to analyse that effectively.”

To help move science forward through analytics, Davis has her team working on projects to build new data analysis platforms.

“I’m challenging my team to help build analytical platforms that will enable scientists work more effectively,” she said.

“Scientists are very collaborative and it’s my job to make sure the IT also lives up to that expectation.”

You can view all the images from the 2017 CIO 100 celebration reception here.