The Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub Seed Fund is designed to promote collaboration and support the cross-pollination of tools, data, and ideas across disciplines and sectors including academia, industry, government, and communities. Funding provided through this program is intended to support the northeast region and align with the Major Goals and Focus Areas of the Northeast Big Data Hub.
After two rounds of applications and evaluations the hub awarded 19 seed fund grants out of 40 proposals in 2020.
- Most popular focus areas were Health, and Education + Data Literacy
- 36 of the proposals were from academic institutions and 4 were from non-profits.
- 18 of the seed fund grants were awarded to academic institutions and 1 to a non-profit.
See below the seed fund awards by their project focus areas.
2020 Seed Fund Recipients
Responsible Data Science

Using Data Science to Study Environmental Racism, Justice, and Policy
Lead PI: Aunshul Rege (Temple University)
Primary Focus Area: Responsible Data Science

Procurement Roundtables: Algorithmic Justice and Responsible AI
Lead PI: Mona Sloane, Ph.D. (New York University)
Collaborators: Rumman Chowdhury, Ph.D. (Parity), John C. Havens (IEEE)
Primary Focus Area: Responsible Data Science
Project Website: Evolving Procurement for Artificial Intelligence Systems in Cities and Beyond
Urban to Rural Communities

Forecasting Salinity in Rivers during Storm Events
Lead PI: Laura Dietz (University of New Hampshire, Computer Science)
Collaborators: Adam Wymore (University of New Hampshire, Natural Resources and the Environment)
Primary Focus Area: Urban to Rural Communities
Project Website: Link

Location-based Citizen Science in Augmented Reality Image Categorization
Lead PI: Seth Cooper (Northeastern University)
Collaborators: Sara Wylie (Northeastern University)
Primary Focus Area: Urban to Rural Communities
Project Website: Cartoscope
Education + Data Literacy

Curricular Structures to Blend Data Science & the Digital Humanities
Lead PI: Amanda K. Greene (Lehigh University)
Collaborators: Dominic DiFranzo (Lehigh University), Edward Whitley (Lehigh University) , Annie Laurie Nichols (Saint Vincent College), Lauren Churilla (Saint Vincent College), Alice Goldfarb (Boston University), Belle Lipton (Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center), Catherine Nikolovski (CIVIC Software Foundation)
Primary Focus Area: Education + Data Literacy
Secondary Focus Area: Responsible Data Science

Data Literacy as an Enabler to Broaden the Participation Of Underrepresented Minorities in STEM Careers
Lead PI: Babak D. Beheshti (New York Institute of Technology)
Primary Focus Area: Education + Data Literacy

Building the Community to Address Data Integration of the Ecological Long Tail
Lead PI: Beverly Woolf (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Collaborators: Ivon Arroyo (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), Will Lee (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), Danielle Allessio (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Primary Focus Area: Education + Data Literacy

Development of a Data Analytics Learning Community
Lead PI: Cathie LeBlanc (Plymouth State University)
Collaborators: Daniel Lee (Plymouth State University), Rebecca Noel (Plymouth State University), Hyun Joong-Kim (Plymouth State University), Jonathan Couser (Plymouth State University)
Primary Focus Area: Education + Data Literacy
Project Website: Link

Building Tools and Training for Public & Educational Use of Geospatial Big Data
Lead PI: Garrett Dash Nelson (Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library)
Collaborators: Belle Lipton (Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library), Michelle LeBlanc (Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library)
Primary Focus Area: Education + Data Literacy
Project Website: Public Data Project, Leventhal Map & Education Center

DEFLAB: Data Education and Feminism at Lafayette and Beyond
Lead PI: Trent Gaugler (Lafayette College)
Collaborators: Jason Simms (Lafayette College), Christopher Phillips (Lafayette College)
Primary Focus Area: Education + Data Literacy

Data Science Training and Research Program
Lead PI: Yusuf Danisman (Queensborough Community College)
Primary Focus Area: Education + Data Literacy
Health

Nonlinear Dynamics and Machine Learning for Accurate Detection of Early-stage Atrial Fibrillation
Lead PI: Changqing Cheng (State University of New York at Binghamton)
Primary Focus Area: Health
Secondary Focus Area: Education and Data Literacy

Contacts patterns during the 2020 COVID-19 epidemic
Lead PI: Eli Fenichel (Yale University – School of the Environment)
Collaborators: Anna Gilbert (Yale University), Roy Lederman (Yale University)
Primary Focus Area: Health
Secondary Focus Area: Urban to Rural Communities

A landscape of virus-host protein-protein interactions in SARS-CoV-2 infection in humans by machine learning
Lead PI: Ho-Joon Lee, PhD (Yale University)
Collaborators: Prashant Emani, PhD (Yale University), Mark Gerstein, PhD (Yale University), Shrikant Mane, PhD (Yale University)
Primary Focus Area: Health

A scalable computational pipeline to develop polygenic risk scores from biobank data
Lead PI: Hongyu Zhao (Yale School of Public Health)
Collaborators: Robert Bjornson (Yale University), Wei Jiang (Yale School of Public Health)
Primary Focus Area: Health
Project Website: Zhao Lab

Convolutional Neural Network Facilitated Functional Cortical Mapping using tEEG Signals
Lead PI: Kaushallya Adhikari (University of Rhode Island)
Primary Focus Area: Health

CritCOVIDView: A Critical Care Visualization Tool for COVID-19
Lead PI: Mohammad Al-Mamun, PhD. (The University of Rhode Island- College of Pharmacy)
Collaborators: Todd Brothers (The University of Rhode Island- College of Pharmacy)
Primary Focus Area: Health

Harnessing Data to Predict and Prevent Cancer Treatment Adverse Event through Artificial Intelligence
Lead PI: Robert Wieder (NJMS, Rutgers University)
Collaborators: Nabil Adam (Rutgers University)
Primary Focus Area: Health

Knowledge Graph Embedding Evolution for COVID-19
Lead PI: Steven Skiena (Stony Brook University, SUNY)
Collaborators: Baojian Zhou (Stony Brook University, SUNY)
Primary Focus Area: Health
Learn more about the Northeast Hub Seed Fund here