Activities
The center faculty members have significant breadth and depth of expertise in the Data Sciences including artificial intelligence, cognitive science, machine learning, big data management and analytics, and statistical inference, information integration, knowledge representation, data semantics, data privacy, and related areas. They are engaged in transformative research in Data Sciences and cyber-enabled discovery in collaboration with their colleagues in life sciences, health sciences, social sciences, agricultural sciences, engineering, among others. The center offers research-based training opportunities in cyber-enabled discovery to a diverse cadre of graduate and undergraduate students. The center faculty are developing, in collaboration with several academic departments and centers, innovative graduate and undergraduate training programs that integrate Data Sciences as an integral component of scientific training, e.g., through the Biomedical Data Sciences PhD Training Program funded by the National Institutes of Health. The center has a strong portfolio of productive basic and applied research collaborations (funded by NSF, NIH, DOD, NSA, among others) that span Data Sciences, Informatics, and e-Science Infrastructure.
In addition to pursuing transformative research in the Data Sciences, the center also:
- Serves as a focal point that links faculty across the campus who share an interest in research and research-based graduate and undergraduate training in the Data Sciences
- Organizes focused workshops on emerging research challenges and opportunities
- Fosters collaborations across Data Sciences through focused working groups organized around specific research themes, research seminars, and other activities
- Fosters collaborations with academic, industrial and government partners in Pennsylvania, United States, and the rest of the world on high impact basic and applied research in the Data Sciences, e.g., in partnership with the Northeast Big Data Hub, a consortium of academic, industrial, government, and non-profit organizations in the Northeastern United States funded by the National Science Foundation to advance collaborative research in, infrastructure for, and applications of, Data Sciences
- Develops and disseminates advanced algorithms and computational infrastructure for data-intensive, distributed, collaborative, integrative e-science, e.g., the Virtual Data Collaboratory, A Regional Cyberinfrastructure for Collaborative Data Intensive Science, funded by the National Science Foundation