Save the Date

The 2026 DARWIN Symposium will highlight an exciting new generation of infrastructure enabling research, education, and operations at UD and its partners in Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and High-Performance Computing. The infrastructure features new hardware and software platforms (the Tech) and new support teams that help boost your productivity (the Talent).

Event Details

Crab Pot Cleanup

Lost or abandoned crab pots pose both environmental and navigational risks as they litter the seafloor, damage boat propellers and trap marine life. At an event hosted by UD’s Delaware Sea Grant, volunteers scooped 120 crab pots out of the Indian River. The event was led by DSI Faculty Council member Art Trembanis, professor in UD’s School of Marine Science and Policy and Brittany Haywood, coastal ecology specialist.

For the Record

DSI affiliated faculty member James Rising lead the development of the integrated assessment model, called META, used to quantify costs and benefits in a new study by researchers at the University of Delaware published in the journal Science, the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment based at the London School of Economics, the National Bank of Belgium and Duke University.

For the Record

DSI resident faculty member Sanford Student, assistant professor in CEHD’s School of Education, has published several articles. They include “Vertical scaling with moderated nonlinear factor analysis” in the Journal of Educational Measurement and “Applying Bayesian checks of cancellation axioms for interval scaling in limited samples” in Behavior Research Methods.

Saleem Ali, the Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at UD and chair of the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, is the lead author of a new study that suggests the need for an international minerals agreement to ensure countries can produce the green technologies necessary to battle climate change. In this photo, Ali is pictured in the Bayan Obo mining region within the Inner Mongolia region of China in 2017 in front of a massive ore nugget of rare earth minerals which is being celebrated here with the following words: "Welcome to the Rare Earths Community.” Photo courtesy of Saleem Ali

AI Meets Real Intelligence at UD Hackathon

Delaware Governor Matt Meyer, with DSI faculty council member Sunita Chandrasekaran, told the hackathon participants that winning the future “ultimately will come down to talent, to people. Our success comes down not to artificial intelligence, but to real intelligence.”

UD Professor Kyle Davis has studied crops, crop rotation and national farming policies as the world struggles to feed its burgeoning population and use resources smartly amid climate change. Photo courtesy of Kyle Davis.

Stronger by Design

University of Delaware researchers, including DSI affiliated faculty member Nektarios Tsoutsos, (right) are leading an NSF-funded project to build security directly into computer chip design, using artificial intelligence, game theory and cryptography to stop hardware attacks before they happen.

Innovation in Focus

Miguel Garcia-Diaz, UD vice president for research, scholarship and innovation (right) and DSI Infrastructure Working Group member Amy Slocum, Delaware EPSCoR director (second from left) named five new Innovation Ambassadors to serve as mentors and champions for research translation and innovation across campus. DSI affiliated faculty member Matthew Mauriello (center) was among those named.

UD Faculty Named Among World’s Most Influential Researchers

DSI affiliated faculty member Xiang-Gen Xia (bottom left) was among five University of Delaware professors named to the 2025 list of Highly Cited Researchers, an international designation by Clarivate, a global analytics company.

Biotechnology Solutions for Plastics Problems

DSI affiliated faculty member Mark Blenner, Thomas and Kipp Gutshall Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has earned the AIChE Langer Prize for efforts to harness biology to manage plastic waste sustainably.

Serving as a nucleating effort to catalyze and coordinate data science initiatives at UD

Coalesce researchers around Data Science research themes
Develop competitive Data Science research programs
Support Data Science and Computing Core Facility
Engage students in Data Science research
Collaborate with government and industry partners

Institutional Strengths

As the vast resource of new and diverse datasets are rapidly becoming available in nearly every aspect of life, data science has the potential to advance human understanding in all branches of science and humanities, and, address grand challenges facing society. The Institute plans to combine disparate, dynamic, and distributed datasets and enable everything from predicting the future behavior of complex systems to precise medical treatments, smart energy usage, and focused educational curricula.

Activities

Resources and Funding Support

Seed funding to support team-based research center grants, infrastructure grants and training grants
Support researchers to identify cross-disciplinary collaborators and access to Data Science & Computing Core Facility
Provide an inventory of data resources, computational tools, and data science-related courses/degree programs

Team Building and Networking

Networking Events: Connecting faculty, students, industry
Annual Research Symposium
Seminars / Distinguished Lecture Series
Research Workshops
Short Courses and Training: Collaborating with academic programs
Industry Engagement: Collaborating with OEIP and Horn Program

Our Mission

The Institute aims to accelerate research in data science, serving as a nucleating effort to catalyze interdisciplinary research collaborations across fields impacting our society.

dsi-info@udel.edu

https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/ud-data-science/

Ammon Pinizzotto Biopharmaceutical Innovation Center, Suite 147, 590 Avenue 1743, Newark, DE 19713