Frontier Development Lab

The Frontier Development Lab (FDL) brings PhD and post-doc researchers from the cutting-edge of AI and data science, and teams them up with their counterparts from the space sector for an intensive eight-week research sprint, based on a range of challenge areas. The results far exceed what any individual could develop in the same time period, or even in years of individual research. FDL applies AI technologies to space science, to push the frontiers of research and develop new tools to help solve some of the biggest challenges that humanity faces. These range from the affects of climate change to predicting space weather, from improving disaster response, to identifying meteorites that could hold the key to the history of our universe. FDL is a public-private partnership with ESA in Europe and NASA in the USA. We work with commercial partners such as NVIDIA, Intel, and Google Cloud who provide expertise and the computing resources necessary for rapid experimentation and iteration in data intensive areas, as well as partners such as the Satellite Applications Catapult, SETI and the University of Oxford. We have established an impressive success rate for research output over accelerated time periods over the time since we launched the Frontier Development Lab. Research papers are regularly accepted to respected journals, presented at scientific conferences (in both AI and space science domains) and have been featured in multiple media outlets.