About the Bayes Centre

History

Located on Potterrow at the heart of the University of Edinburgh’s Central campus.

The £45 million Bayes Centre building, designed by Bennetts Associates, was officially opened in October 2018 by University of Edinburgh Chancellor HRH The Princess Royal. 

The Bayes Centre is physically connected to the world-leading Informatics Forum, home to the largest computing research department in Europe, and the Dugald Stewart Building which hosts the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences.

The building provides space for approximately 650 researchers, students and external partners over five floors, the Centre’s impressive space is open in design, providing interactive places for occupants from across academia, industry and the public sector to foster relationships. Due to this deliberate design, the Centre creates a collaborative community which works in synergy to unlock pioneering advances in data science and artificial intelligence.

The Bayes Centre building has won the 'Large Project' Award at the 2019 Edinburgh Architectural Association Awards.

Practical information regarding the building is available for University staff via the Bayes Intranet.

Why Bayes?

The Bayes Centre is named after Thomas Bayes (c.1701-1761), a statistician, philosopher, and minister who came to Edinburgh to study logic and theology in 1719. Bayes is famous for Bayes' Theorem, which provides an elegant and simple way of calculating how likely a certain hypothesis is given some observed evidence. For example, if we know the probability of a certain disease in the population, and the probability that this disease would cause a certain symptom to appear, this allows us to calculate how likely a patient who presents with this symptom is to suffer from the disease. Bayes' theorem has been enormously influential in probability theory and statistics, and is considered by many to be that foundation of modern-day machine learning, one of the key methods used in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.

RIAS Award Winner for Architecture

Decorative image

 

Related links

Bennetts Associates

Informatics Forum

School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Science

BC
Architectural model of the Bayes Centre and Informatics Forum