The mission of the Northeast Big Data Hub is to build and strengthen partnerships. Great partnerships cannot rest on a foundation of inequality; they must work to advance equity for all partners, of all backgrounds. That’s why building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community is central to the work of the Hub. The Northeast Big Data Hub is committed to advancing equity for those who have been underserved in the data science field, including Black and Hispanic people.

As a mode of representation, data holds great power in individual and institutional decision-making. It both reveals disparities and needs within our communities and provides a path forward toward innovation and change. As a community of data science practitioners, we are committed to building diversity, equity, and inclusion in all aspects of our work, always mindful that we leverage the power of data responsibly and accessibly. Our focus on Responsible Data Science serves as a foundation for enabling data science that is secure, private, and ethical.

We realize our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion through mutual collaboration, proactive outreach, and inclusivity by design. Our goal every day is to do better than we have done before.

Learn more below about some of our work to date.

Data Science Institute Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Resources

The Data Science Institute (DSI) at Columbia University hosts the Race + Data Science Lecture Series at regular intervals. This lecture series aims to celebrate and advance research in the areas of race and data, engineering, and computational science.

With this series of events, the DSI’s goal is to improve how we as data scientists and data-adjacent researchers speak about race. Through wide distribution of our speaker’s research, we envision that these talks can lead to the discovery of important resources about race, inequity, and emerging applications. This series is funded by support from the MacArthur Foundation and New America.