Professor Andrew Blake, currently a Microsoft Distinguished Scientist and the Laboratory Director at Microsoft Cambridge, has been appointed the first Director of the newly formed Alan Turing Institute.

Announced in Chancellor George Osborne’s 2014 Budget, the inter-university institute is named after codebreaking genius Alan Turing, the King’s College alumnus whose work cracking the Nazi Enigma code during World War II is believed to have greatly shortened the war and saved millions of lives.

His legacy is being taken forward by Cambridge academics who, alongside those from Oxford, Edinburgh, UCL and Warwick, will contribute funding and research to the British Library-based facility. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) will coordinate the project.

Having already received a £42 million endowment from the British government, it will be boosted by a £10 million grant from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation that will fund its research activities. Each university will also contribute £5 million.

The Institute will promote the development and use of computer science, algorithms, advanced mathematics and “big data”. The Centre for Economics and Business research estimates that the big data marketplace could benefit the UK economy to the tune of £216 billion, creating 58,000 new jobs in the UK by 2017.

Professor Blake, a graduate of Trinity College and a former don at University of Oxford, joined Microsoft in 1999 as a Senior Researcher within the Computer Vision group, rising to become the Deputy Managing Director and then Director of the company’s Cambridge lab. In 2007, the Institution of Engineering and Technology presented him with the Mountbatten Medal, and in 2011 he was elected to the council of the Royal Society.

Speaking on his appointment, Professor Blake said: “I am very excited to be chosen for this unique opportunity to lead the Alan Turing Institute. The vision of bringing together the mathematical and computer scientists from the country’s top universities to develop the new discipline of data science, through an independent institute with strategic links to commerce and industry, is very compelling.”

“The institute has a societally important mission and ambitious research goals. We will go all out to achieve them.”

Howard Covington, chair of the Alan Turing Institute, commented: “The enthusiasm and commitment of the founding partners have enabled the Institute to make rapid progress.”

“We will now turn to building the Institute’s research activities. We are delighted to welcome Andrew Blake as our new director and to begin strategic relationships with the Lloyd’s Register Foundation and GCHQ.”