The Centre is currently looking for small to medium sized businesses in Cornwall to collaborate on research that uses data gathered from social media.

The call is part of the Centre’s In Residence scheme and will fund academics and businesses to spend time together.

The successful companies will work with Dr Steven Graham, Senior Lecturer in eHealth and Wellbeing, to formulate research ideas and co-design projects based on the following themes:

Community trends in Cornwall

This project will explore the potential to use social media networks to ‘take the pulse’ of Cornish communities; to identify and understand concerns, celebrate achievements, and ultimately enable community empowerment through shared knowledge.

Examples might include investigating the language used in tweets, or capturing geographical information to identify trends.

Predicting health changes from social media language

This project will explore the potential to create an application or system to analyse textual data generated by individuals using social media. The system will aim to highlight possible health changes in conditions such as mental wellbeing and chronic pain, particularly in vulnerable groups.

The Centre would like to hear from businesses that have technical or methodological expertise in these areas, and those who can see the potential commercial value in their outcomes.

So called eHealth and eWellbeing have been highlighted by Cornwall’s Local Enterprise Partnership as one of the region’s specialisations for the next round of European funding. With factors such as superfast broadband and existing research into big data, the region is well placed to lead the way in this emerging field.

See the In Residence page for information on how to apply; expressions of interest must be received by Wednesday 30th April 2014.

Image courtesy of Stephan Geyer