About Us

How does the DSI contribute to addressing significant global challenges?

The Data Science Initiative (DSI) aims to make a mark in data science research, nationally and internationally, by charting new research directions and enabling the development of new methods, data sets, and software that are used to address grand challenges facing our state, nation, and the world.

The University of Minnesota is a powerhouse in cutting edge Data Science research with many high-quality Data Science activities already existing throughout our campuses. The UMN Data Science Initiatives primary focus is university-wide communication, coordination, integration, and amplification of those activities. This includes both near-term coordination of existing efforts to maximize efficiency and far-term collaboration to initiate new research and education topics.

The initial topical focus areas are (1) foundational data science and (2) digital health and personalized healthcare delivery. The expectation is that these efforts will augment and benefit from additional system-level efforts, as well as spawn new focus areas. Initial activities will include seed grants as well as graduate student fellowships that are meant to facilitate the creation of small and large teams that will position UMN to be successful in external funding opportunities in these focus areas, and in others as they expand.