The centre will develop core statistical methodologies that are strategically necessary to achieve innovation goals in four key sectors: petroleum, finance, marine and health. The centre aims to become a European leader in applied statistics.

Host Institute: Norwegian Computing Center (NR)

Research partners: University of Oslo, NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

User partners: DnB NOR ASA, Gjensidige Forsikring, Sencel Bioinformatics AS, Spermatech AS, Biomolex AS, Oslo University Hospital HF, Statoil ASA, Norsk Hydro ASA, Smerud Medical Research Int. as, Institute of Marine Reseearch, PubGene AS

Budget: Approx. NOK 320 million over eight years

Director/contact: Professor Arnoldo Frigessi
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Administration:
Andre Teigland
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sfi² is built on the fact that discovery and innovation in the four sectors pose common challenges to modern statistics. Science, industry and business possess the technology to collect, store and distribute huge amounts of data efficiently, at very low cost. This increases the breadth and depth of the data to be managed.

Today, systems are measured more in depth, giving a more complete and detailed picture of processes and phenomena. Data may carry precious information that can boost innovation dramatically. However, it is challenging to turn high dimensional data sets into useful information. Many sources of data of different types scale and quality must be treated simultaneously, which is a great challenge to statistics.

Competitiveness is crucial to economic growth. The time and margins to reach innovative products and services are small. Focus is now being placed on the next generation goals and the investigation of "second order effects", which can explain important phenomena and behaviours, but are more difficult to identify.