ATOM Hackathon 2024

The University of Delaware’s Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence (AICoE) and Data Science Institute (DSI) are together organizing an ML/AI hackathon opportunity for our students/postdoc/research staff and anyone interested to participate in, meet new researchers, learn ML/AI skills and network/build new connections! This hackathon is in collaboration with Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine (ATOM).

Registration is now closed.

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.

For the Record

DSI Faculty Council member Jennifer Horney, professor and founding director of the epidemiology program in the College of Health Sciences, recently published research in the journal Scientometrics. The open-access article, “Gender and the h-index in Epidemiology,” is the first-of-its-kind examination of gender and professional age bias in citation indices among epidemiology faculty.

Reading with Bookworms

In a new study published in Scientific Studies in Reading, UD Associate Professor and DSI Faculty Council member Henry May, found that the Bookworms curriculum, significantly and positively impacted student literacy achievement by the end of fifth grade, with gains compounding over time.

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

Irrigating Nigeria

DSI Fellow Bhoktear Mahbub Khan, a doctoral student at the University of Delaware in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, (center) and DSI Resident Faculty member Kyle Davis (second from left) recently traveled to Nigeria to lead a workshop geared toward better understanding the opportunities and challenges associated with scaling up irrigation in Nigeria.

Expanding irrigation in Nigeria would allow farmers to sow seeds and grow crops during dry periods, extend the growing season beyond the traditional rainy season, and help Africa’s most populous country become more food secure.

The Future Is Bright For The Forecaster Cup

DSI Affiliated Faculty member Zvi Schwartz, professor of hospitality business management, has started a new global competition called the Forecaster Cup, which welcomed teams of hospitality students from around the world to match wits using hotel data to predict occupancy in pursuit of a $1,000 prize.

4th International Radar Aeroecology Conference and Worksho

The Aeroecology Program at the University of Delaware will be holding the 4th International Radar Aeroecology Conference and Workshop in Newark, Delaware, USA.

August 4 – 9, 2024

Ready, Set, VirusGo

Students from Las Américas ASPIRA Academy High School pose with an augmented reality model of a Brome mosaic virus, part of the VirusGo teaching platform developed by DSI Affiliated Faculty member Jodi Hadden-Perilla, Professor Lauren Genova and undergraduates Riley McKeon and Ava West. VirusGo combines AR and a role-playing game to teach students about viruses.

Sharing Innovative Ideas

UD faculty and staff presented ideas that promote academic excellence at the second annual One Idea, One Slide Summit.

DSI Faculty Council member Bintong Chen, professor of business administration and director of Lerner College of Business and Economy, presented “FinTech Policy Innovation: Using Customer Sensitive Data to Improve Fair Lending” at the One Idea, One Slide Summit.

DSI Faculty Council member Sunita Chandrasekaran, David L. and Beverly J.C. Mills Career Development chair, presented “Boost UD Discovery and Learning through Free AI Platform.”

Computers and Chemistry

At the University of Delaware, a National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) known as the Computing and Data Science Training for Materials Innovation, Discovery, & Analytics (MIDAS) program is helping students obtain the skills and experiences they need to become fluent in both computational and chemical languages.

The NRT-MIDAS program was launched by DSI Faculty Council member Arthi Jayaraman, the Centennial Term Professor for Excellence in Research and Education who holds joint appointments in the College of Engineering’s departments of chemical and biomolecular engineering and materials science and engineering. Jayaraman, is both the program director and PI of the $3 million grant from NSF that supports the program for its first five years.

DSI Resident Faculty member Austin Brockmeier and DSI Faculty Council member Sunita Chandrasekaran have served as co-instructors of previous iterations of the NRT Hackathon course (Chandrasekaran in 2022 and Brockmeier in 2023).

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

Data Science in the News

Data Analytics Programs Take Off

Colleges are working to meet demand for big data analysis with burgeoning degree and non-degree programs. To keep up with the explosion of big data across all industries, college and universities have debuted dozens of data analytics programs during the past few...

Prepare Undergrads for Data-Driven Workplace

Academic Institutions Should Prepare Undergraduates for a Data-Driven Workplace, New Report Recommends WASHINGTON – All U.S. undergraduate students should develop a basic understanding of data science to prepare them adequately for the workforce, says a...

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