News, updates, and perspectives from across the Northeast and beyond.
Understanding the structures of the SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins is essential to understanding its biology, its infectiousness, its transmissibility, and how to develop treatments for it. Our project focuses on enabling the process of structure determination for SARS-CoV-2 proteins.
The role of contaminated surfaces (fomites) in community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 has been debated. Our team is sampling high-touch public surfaces during the ongoing pandemic to improve understanding of the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection when the public accesses essential businesses such as grocery stores, pharmacies, and gas stations.
Modeling COVID-19 in the context of optimizing quarantine policy using mobility patterns
We are attempting to apply approaches developed in microbial ecology to understand how a viral pathogen such as SARS-CoV-2 can survive and be transmitted in academic environments.
We are designing a public health solution for contact tracing built around digital ecosystems. Our current focus is on improving privacy, user-experience, effectiveness, and adoption of digital contact tracing. With so many issues at forefront, the challenge to solve the contact tracing puzzle is manifold.
People’s ability to understand and personalize threats are key in getting them to adopt protective behaviors. COVID-19 presents a serious threat to health. However, unlike threats from other kinds of hazards, the virus does not offer any visible indication of its threat or presence.
We have a detailed transmission model that specifically focuses on the availability of testing strategies and their effect on the containment and spread of COVID-19, which is amenable to the systematic exploration of a wide range of important “what-if” scenarios.
Innovation Insights is a curated series highlighting exciting new developments in the field of data science. Email contact@nebigdatahub.org to share news for Innovation Insights. “Digital security — like so many aspects of life — will be meaningfully and perhaps radically different on the other side of the 2020 pandemic crisis. […]
The Northeast Big Data Hub is delighted to announce our Seed Fund program this month. Designed to promote collaboration in data science, the Seed Fund will encourage the cross-pollination of ideas, data and tools across disciplines and sectors including academia, industry, government, and communities. Funding provided through this program is intended […]
Guest post by Ivon Arroyo, Associate Professor in the College of Education and the College of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The Big Data for Education Spoke’s professional development workshops have empowered teachers to leverage data to identify and answer a variety of pedagogical questions about their […]
Guest post by Chase Wu, Associate Chair of and Professor in the Department of Computer Science at NJIT. Research Background Model-based simulations have become an essential component in next-generation scientific applications and are generating big data on the order of terabyte at present and petabyte or exabyte in the predictable […]
Guest post by Ryan Baker, Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. The Northeast Big Data for Education Spoke has conducted considerable outreach on methods for data science for educational data sets. Workshops have been conducted in New York City, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and […]
Guest post by Ryan Baker, Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. The ASSISTments Longitudinal Data Competition invited data scientists around the world to participate in a competition around the analysis of student data. Data from middle school student use of a popular online […]
Following the announcement of our new strategic plan on June 1st, our leadership team and collaborators have been hard at work turning strategy into practice. As operations manager and head of communications at the Northeast Hub, I always want to ensure their ingenuity is fully reflected and celebrated on our […]
The Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub is excited to announce Florence Hudson as our new Executive Director. Florence has been engaged with the Northeast Hub since its founding – as a Steering Committee member, special advisor for Next Generation Internet, and a member of the Northeast and All Hubs Strategic Working Groups. As an aerospace and […]
Dear Northeast Hub Community, I hope that you are all doing well, despite our world being turned upside down by COVID-19, and that you and yours are healthy. I’m writing to let you know that I am stepping down as Executive Director of the Northeast Big Data Hub on April 16th. […]
Data science is expanding rapidly in undergraduate education, but at the K-12 level, few schools have integrated this critical subject into their curricula. Many questions must be answered first: how should data science be taught to high schoolers? As a standalone course, or integrated throughout other courses? What level of […]
The Hub Builds Data Science Partnerships to Address Societal Challenges The Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub has been awarded a four year, $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue its work in building cross-sector data science partnerships that address societal challenges, spur economic development, and accelerate […]
Studying the causes of disease is essential to medical research. However, the discussion is sometimes framed, misleadingly, as ‘nature vs. nurture’—is your condition the result of your genetics or your environment? Generally, the answer is both. But to what degree? A new study in Nature Genetics explores this question for […]
In just three years, the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub has gone from an idea about igniting new big data partnerships to a rapidly growing network that has collaborated with 250+ academic, industry, government and non-profit organizations on data-driven initiatives. This would not be possible without our thriving community – […]
We’re very pleased to announce today that Jeannette M. Wing will become the Principal Investigator of the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub. Dr. Wing is the Avanessians Director of the Data Science Institute at Columbia University, where she oversees the Institute’s research, educational, and innovation programs. Wing, who is also […]
As part of our mission to address high-priority challenges with data-driven solutions, the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub put out a call for workshop proposals this spring. We sought to support community-driven workshops that are designed to plan and develop Big Data projects, and are delighted to announce our first […]
We live in the age of the data deluge, with research group IDC forecasting that humankind will create and replicate 163 zettabytes of data by the year 2025. For perspective, only about 2.7 zettabytes were created and replicated globally in 2012. How might we most effectively manage our abundant data […]
Did you participate in our 2018 Summit? Share your thoughts with us here on what you liked, and what you’d like to see in future. Thank you to everyone who made our 2018 Annual Summit a success! Every year, we bring our growing community together for a day of […]
Winning Schemes for Predicting Student Interest in Science UMass Amherst, WPI, Penn announce winners of Northeast big data competition AMHERST, Mass. – After a year-long, global data-mining competition, organizers today awarded the top three winning teams from Hong Kong, Japan and Michigan at the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Northeast Big […]
Over on the Microsoft Azure Blog, Vani Mandava (Director, Data Science Research, Microsoft Research) highlights Microsoft’s partnership with NSF-funded big data initiatives including the Big Data Hubs. Microsoft has committed $6 million in cloud credits to support data science innovation across these programs, including the Northeast Big Data Hub’s Health Spoke […]
In November 2017, the NSF Big Data Innovation Hubs held a workshop in conjunction with the European Big Data Value Forum 2017, and in collaboration with the EU Big Data Value Association (BDVA), PICASSO Project, and INRIA. The workshop brought together academic and industry actors from the US and the EU […]
The Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub (NEBDIH) is excited to announce our CRUX program: a Collaborative Resource and Understanding Exchange. CRUX will launch the development of NEBDIH’s forthcoming Big Data Map and Assets Platform, with an ultimate aim of connecting the dots to create data-driven solutions to real-world problems. What […]
With data touching all aspects of our lives today, how can we look beyond traditional approaches to data science education to build capacity as broadly and inclusively as possible? Leaders in data science education discussed “Alternative Avenues for Development of Data Science Education Capacity” on Friday, September 22nd, in a […]
Guest post by Catherine Cramer, NYSCI Increasingly, the prosperity, innovation and security of individuals and communities depend on a big data-literate society, which calls for a concerted effort to define what it means to be a big data literate citizen, information worker, researcher, or policymaker. As a step toward that […]
Our Big Data in Education Spoke harnesses data-driven approaches to improve student outcomes and transform existing educational practices. Activities have recently kicked off with the first of three educational data competitions now open to worldwide participation. You can learn more and get involved at our upcoming Spoke meeting this summer! […]
How can big data help predict student outcomes? Ryan Baker (U Penn) and Neil Heffernan (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) of our Big Data for Education Spoke hope to do just that via the Longitudinal Educational Big Data Competition. Using carefully de-identified, real-world educational data, participants will predict whether 172 students in validation and […]
Click here to access the report Data sharing challenges are extensive in cases involving industry and academia, and highlight the need for sharable, adaptable solutions. To that end, a report summarizing the proceedings and outputs of 2016’s Northeast Hub workshop on Data Sharing has recently been published. The workshop convened data science practitioners to […]
This post highlights one of the up-and-coming data science graduate students who participated in the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub’s “Young Innovators” program this year. This program and others like it contribute to the Northeast Hub’s mission to build public-private partnerships to address high-priority societal challenges with data-driven solutions. The […]
“Leveraging Big Data for Healthcare Revolution” Guest post from Professor Yi Chen, Henry J. Leir Chair in Healthcare, Associate Professor in the Martin Tuchman School of Management (MT-SoM) at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). On October 5th and 6th, a symposium on Data Science for Healthcare (DaSH), sponsored by the Leir […]
“A Major Milestone for the Data Economy” Click here for the press release from NTIS The four Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs have been selected by the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce to enter into a Joint Venture Partnership. Once finalized, this […]
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has published the Smart & Connected Communities (S&CC) program solicitation, spanning the Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE); Education and Human Resources (EHR); Engineering (ENG); Geosciences (GEO); and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). The goal of the S&CC program solicitation is […]
ELabNYC (Bio & Health Tech Entrepreneurship Lab NYC) is now accepting applications for its 2017 program where up to twenty new ventures will be invited to participate and join a growing, vibrant community of entrepreneurs. To apply, please submit your application by November 1, 2016. (Link to application.) About: ELabNYC is a […]
The Center for Discrete Mathematic and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) at Rutgers University recently announced details of the planning grant it received from the National Science Foundation as part of the Big Data Hubs program. One of four planning grants (along with three full awards) issued to Northeast Big […]
A symposium on differential privacy will be held at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study, next month. The event will bring together speakers including Helen Nissenbaum (Cornell Tech and NYU), Aaron Roth (University of Pennsylvania), Guy Rothblum (Weizmann Institute), Kunal Talwar (Google Brain), and Jonathan Ullman (Northeastern University). To learn more and register, please visit […]
On September 29th and 30th, stakeholders from across the Northeast and beyond joined the Hub at Drexel University in Philadelphia for “Enabling Seamless Data Sharing in Industry and Academia,” a cross-sector workshop put on by our community to tackle the challenges of sharing data head-on. In short “TED talk”-style presentations and […]
We don’t just facilitate innovative research at the #BDHubs – we go under the lens ourselves! A new study will examine the Hubs’ ongoing partnership-building activities, to better understand the rise and institutionalization of data sciences from the Hubs’ unique juncture of the academic, industry, government and non-profit sectors. A full announcement […]
From the announcement by Internet2: Miami, FL, September 27, 2016 – Today, at the 2016 Technology Exchange event, Internet2 announced an official call for papers (CFP) from its members and partners to help envision the next Internet2 network. Internet2 is planning a potential major reinvestment in its infrastructure in 2018 […]
Click here for a PDF version of this release. Click here for the press release from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced $3.3 million in grants to researchers affiliated with the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub. A common theme underlying the projects below is […]
On May 23rd, the Obama Administration released the Federal Big Data Research and Development Strategic Plan, part of the Big Data Research and Development Initiative launched in 2012. As data science capabilities and opportunities continue to grow, the Plan provides a comprehensive overview and establishes guidance for developing and expanding […]
Over the coming months, the Northeast Big Data Hub will be visiting stakeholders throughout our region, building relationships face-to-face. Our goals on these trips are to:
Data science and biomedicine are a powerful combination, and the Northeast region is well poised to bring them together. The provision of health care and the discovery of biological knowledge are heavily focused on information, with highly complex, vast data sets harboring the potential for transformative impact when partnered with the […]
