Following the Scottish Government’s announcement of a further £1M investment in The Data Lab to help businesses invest in data analytics and AI, we are delighted to announce £300K of funding available to support SMEs to progress on their data journeys. This opportunity will fund placements with postgraduate masters students, allowing them to undertake short data science projects and apply their academic skills to your organisation’s real life challenges.
The Data Lab MSc cohort consists of 160 students studying a range of courses in data science, AI and data engineering, including in health and social science domains, at universities across Scotland. The placement programme is open to any Scottish organisation looking to inject state of the art data science technologies, creativity and enthusiasm into their organisation, with students available for 8-12 week placements from June onwards.
We are delighted that this funding will enable us to provide 60 grants of £5K to start-ups and SMEs to support their ability to participate in the programme, providing a boost to the economy in supporting data driven innovation and in many cases aiding COVID recovery. These grants will be allocated to the first 60 SMEs who have a confirmed project matched to a student ready for placement to commence in the summer. In order to be considered for grant funding, projects must be matched to students by 31st March 2021. However, we expect demand for this funding to be high so if you are interested we would recommend applying as soon as possible.
Find out more about our placement programmes. If you are interested in applying please get in touch with placements@thedatalab.com to discuss prior to submitting an application form.
The placement programme is open to organisations across Scotland of any size so even if you are not eligible for a grant but would be interested in learning more about the programme, how you can participate, and to hear about the experience from others who have taken part previously, please register to attend our information event on 23rd February.
