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.

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.

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.

For the Record

DSI Faculty Council member Xiao Fang, professor of management information systems, JPMorgan Chase Senior Faculty Fellow of the Institute for Financial Services Analytics, at UD’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics recently had multiple coauthored papers accepted for publication by top journals in information systems, computing and operations.

Microsoft Pilot event

An Event Held During Data Science Week at UD

Event Details

For the Record

DSI Infrastructure Working Group member Annie Johnson, associate University librarian for research, teaching and technology, is the coauthor of “The Benefits of Working with a University Press to Establish a Library Publishing Program: Case Studies from Temple University and the University of Delaware”.

The 2025 Delaware Data Science Symposium, an event organized by the UD Data Science Institute, brought together UD researchers and local partners interested in Data Science applications, theory, and pedagogy across domains. The symposium was held on October 24th in-person at UD’s Star Campus in the Audion at STAR Tower. Among other activities, the symposium included a keynote talk by Professor Katie Shilton, a poster session and associated lightning talks, networking opportunities, a panel discussion, and a series of breakout sessions.

Event Details

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/

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