The IT Pro Podcast: Digitising dinosaurs
How the Natural History Museum uses data to explore the ancient world

Many will doubtless be familiar with London’s Natural History Museum as a fun and educational place to visit, but it’s also an important research institution. Alongside its role as a tourist attraction, it also does vital work in the biological sciences field, doing things like species categorisation and climate science research.
All of that research involves a huge amount of very precise data, and managing it all is no easy task. In this week’s episode, we speak to Alison Davies, CIO of the Natural History Museum, about the role of data literacy in education, her background in scientific research, and how a giant squid makes her office so interesting to work in.
In this week’s headlines, we look at Microsoft’s $100,000 IoT bug bounty, why the UK’s internet still lags behind other countries, and the hacker behind the love bug.
Footnotes
News
- Microsoft offers hackers $100K to break Azure Sphere
- UK internet outages remain high despite global slowdown
- Creator of notorious 'Love Bug' virus comes clean after 20 years
In-depth
- Natural History Museum Data Portal
- UK to start trialling contact-tracing app on Isle of Wight
- What is big data analytics?
- Giant sea creature goes on display
- Seeing double: The rise of the digital twin
- Microsoft launches Stranger Things-inspired coding courses
- University uptake for STEM subjects flat despite more A-level entries
- How technology is changing education
Subscribe
- Subscribe to The IT Pro Podcast on Apple Podcasts
- Subscribe to The IT Pro Podcast on Google Podcasts
- Subscribe to The IT Pro Podcast on Spotify
- Subscribe to the IT Pro newsletter
- Subscribe to IT Pro 20/20
Sign up today and you will receive a free copy of our Future Focus 2025 report - the leading guidance on AI, cybersecurity and other IT challenges as per 700+ senior executives
ITPro is a global business technology website providing the latest news, analysis, and business insight for IT decision-makers. Whether it's cyber security, cloud computing, IT infrastructure, or business strategy, we aim to equip leaders with the data they need to make informed IT investments.
For regular updates delivered to your inbox and social feeds, be sure to sign up to our daily newsletter and follow on us LinkedIn and Twitter.
-
Customizing for Every Customer
Personalise customer experiences at scale with CRM+AI+Data+Trust. True 1-to-1 personalisation is finally possible.
-
The Data Foundation for the Age of AI
See how you can build a data strategy for the age of AI. How Data Cloud unifies data for use in personalisation and grounded AI.
-
Will devs lose their jobs to AI?
ITPro Podcast Major errors in AI code generation throw doubt on the timeline to replacing human workers
-
Google Cloud Summit London 2025: Practical AI deployment
ITPro Podcast As startups take hold of technologies such as AI agents, where is the sector headed?
-
The evolution from robots to agents
Sponsored Podcast With the right adoption strategy, agentic AI can be a force multiplier for productivity
-
Podcast Transcript: Are reasoning models fundamentally flawed?
ITPro Podcast A report from Apple has cast significant doubts on the efficacy of reasoning models, going as far as to suggest that when a problem is too complex, they simply give up
-
Are reasoning models fundamentally flawed?
ITPro Podcast A report from Apple has cast significant doubts on the efficacy of reasoning models, going as far as to suggest that when a problem is too complex, they simply give up
-
Dell Technologies World 2025: All in on AI
ITPro Podcast From the cloud to the edge, enterprise architecture for AI must be carefully considered
-
SAS Innovate 2025: Pursuing pragmatic AI
ITPro Podcast As CISA delivered an eleventh-hour reprieve for the CVE database, AWS reportedly began to pause some data center leases
-
Putting small language models under the microscope
ITPro Podcast The benefits of small language models are undeniable – but they're no silver bullet