The centre’s primary goal is to advance fundamental knowledge in machine learning and data analytics to address the most challenging and pressing health, environmental, and societal problems for the benefit of our society. We understand that machine learning (ML) can help, but it’s not a silver bullet: tackling these questions requires a concerted transdisciplinary effort across all sectors of society from the onset of a project.ML has shown its potential, but machine learning needs to advance to tackle the breadth and scope of these large-scale problems. The centre will be a catalyst for new collaborations and feed into university and faculty level centres, non-profit, government, non-governmental organisations, and our community to allow them to leverage ML expertise specific to Aotearoa context. This requires a deep understanding of current state-of-the-art ML algorithms, their limitations, and their applicability in different domains, particularly with respect to ethical and cultural safety.