May Newsletter

May Announcement

Welcome to the vibrant month of May, data enthusiasts! As we step into this new month, we're excited to highlight our upcoming Spring Research Workshop on Generative AI, scheduled for the end of May, from the 22nd to the 24th, at the Humphrey Conference Center. This workshop promises insightful discussions on the innovative role of Generative AI in shaping healthcare, public policy, and beyond.

But that's just one of the many exciting opportunities awaiting you this May. As the month unfolds, there will be numerous chances for you to connect with the data science community, explore funding opportunities, and contribute to cutting-edge research. Whether you're seeking to deepen your knowledge, network with fellow enthusiasts, or showcase your latest projects, May offers a wealth of avenues to engage and grow in the field of data science.

So, stay tuned as we guide you through the month, highlighting funding opportunities, calls for papers, and other events that will keep you at the forefront of the data science landscape. Let's make the most of May's offerings and continue our journey of driving impactful advancements in data science together!

Community Corner Spotlight

Saonli Basu

The Data Science Initiative (DSI) regularly features interviews with members of our data science community, delving into their perspectives on the field and its implications for their careers. This month, we're excited to introduce Saonli Basu, whose expertise and insights shed light on the evolving landscape of data science. Follow the link below to discover their thoughts on data science.

In this edition of our newsletter, we're privileged to hear from Saonli Basu, an expert in statistical genomics. Saonli shares her current research interests, which revolve around integrating genomic research into precision public health. She delves into dimension reduction methods, heritability estimation, and genomic risk prediction, particularly in multi-ethnic datasets. Exploring the essence of Data Science, Saonli defines it as an interdisciplinary field crucial for extracting insights from vast datasets. She unveils a fascinating insight from her recent experiences—a testament to the profound impact of data diversity on analysis outcomes. Moreover, Saonli introduces her initiative, the Genomic Data Commons, where she and her team are developing tools and workflows using R, Python, and Visual Studio Code. Looking ahead, she shares her excitement about the potential of integrating diverse datasets for precision health and personalized medicine, underscoring the challenges and opportunities ahead in data science advancement.

Intrigued to learn more? Head to the Community Corner page on our website to delve deeper into Saonli's answers to our community corner questions.

The Latest Community Corner Spotlight

Initiative Updates

DSI’s New Website is now live!

Check out our new website: Find details about all of the data science initiatives, centers, and educational programs on our UMN Data Science Directory! Look for exciting Data Science events from around campus on our new events page! Request assistance in anything from help with creating an event, to writing a grant, to getting in touch with the right expert in the new incarnation of the DASH email via our request assistance form! And learn more about our leaders and core members and how to become one!

DSI's New Frontier: DSI Assumes Leadership of WiADS Event

The Data Science Initiative is proud to announce we will be taking the helm of the Women in AI & Data Science Conference (WiADS) with assistance from MinneAnalytics coming in the fall of 2024!

The last WiADS (previously MinneWiADS) was presented by MinneAnalytics in 2022. This data science and tech conference will bring together leaders, experts, and anyone interested in data science and AI, especially those who identify as women and non-binary, to share knowledge, make connections, and inspire one another. This free conference is open to all, and is intended to provide a platform for women in data science and AI. It will include technical sessions, business applications, panel discussions, and of course, the opportunity to connect with your peers in the community.

Stay tuned for more information!

K-12 Opportunity for Faculty

Interested in co-teaching GCC 3026? This unique course mentors undergraduates in science projects at Murray and offers a weekend at Wolf Ridge. Learn more.

We are seeking enthusiastic professors interested in co-teaching GCC 3026. This course annually guides 20 undergraduates to Murray to mentor science projects and partake in a weekend at Wolf Ridge, fostering community. Ideal candidates would include one science and one education professor to fulfill our learning goals centered on scientific identity development and navigating STEM complexities in middle school. We particularly welcome expertise in ecology/environment, as we partner with an 8th-grade class at Murray. 

Reach out to Cheryl Olman ([email protected]) if you are interested or for more details!

Please note that while this position entails overload teaching, potential negotiation for workload credit is possible.

Research Spotlight - Seed Grant Awardee

Home-Based Individualized Analysis of Postural Instability in PD Patients

PI(s): Rajesh Rajamani
DSI Track: Digital Health
MnDRIVE Area(s): Brain Conditions

Falls are a major cause of hospitalization in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, lead to a significant loss in their quality of life and most frequently occur in their home environment [1]–[3]. This project proposes data collection from wearable sensors worn at home by PD patients in order to develop a predictive falls risk algorithm that can characterize postural instability and specifically identify kinematic deficits in gait for targeted intervention. The technology developed in this research will also enable real-time detection of high-fall-risk activities and therefore enable feedback for improved closed-loop neuromodulation. We hypothesize that factors which produce falls can be better understood and postural instability better characterized by home monitoring rather than by standard in-clinic testing. Monitoring patients at home requires automatic recognition of their high fall-risk activities and quantification of their movement and balance during these activities. This will be done using automatic classification of daily living activities, including recognition of near-falls, with subsequent estimation of kinematic parameters such as reaction time, step length, number of steps and severity of the high fall-risk event. Preliminary results from this seed grant will enable the research team to submit several strong external grant applications.

View 2023 Seed Grant Awardees

Events

Join us for insightful seminars that delve into the world of data and its foundational principles as well as its wide-ranging applications in data science.

Upcoming DSI Events

Quarterly Data Science Coordination meeting for Administrators

May 20th, 2024

Venue: Walter Library

Quarterly Data Science Coordination meeting for Administrators of Data Science related initiatives/centers/units at the UMN. Each quarter the administrators of the various (over 30!) centers, initiatives, and other units related to Data Science get together to ‘talk shop’. This in person event is aimed at increasing collaboration campus wide and leaning on each other's expertise. 

If you’d like to join please send an email to [email protected]

Spring Research Workshop: Generative AI

May 22nd - 24th, 2024

Venue: Humphrey Conference Center

Our spring research workshop on Generative AI aims to foster collaboration and knowledge exchange within the UMN research community.

The workshop will cover:

• May 22nd: GenAI Foundations/Trustworthiness and Capabilities, featuring a keynote address by Xiao-Li Meng
• May 23rd: GenAI and Public Policy and Societal Impacts, featuring a keynote address by Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon
• May 24th: GenAI and Health, featuring a keynote address by Lucila Ohno-Machado

We encourage you to mark your calendars and participate in this enriching workshop.

Last Day of Registration will be on May 12th at 11:59 p.m.

Register Now

Events in Data Discovery Across Departments  

IIB Breakfast Meeting

May 15, 2024

Venue: 401/402 Walter Library

All are invited to attend the International Institute for Biosensing Breakfast Meeting. During this meeting, we will introduce IIB and some of its works in the past months and plans for the future. We hope to get your valuable insights and feedback.

Register Now

Midwest Machine Learning Symposium

May 20–21, 2024

Venue: Graduate Hotels @ Minneapolis [Google Map]

The Midwest Machine Learning Symposium, scheduled for May 20–21, 2024, seeks to gather machine learning researchers from the region for engaging discussions and debates, encouraging collaboration across institutions, and highlighting the expertise of ML researchers at various career levels. Esteemed speakers like George Karypis from Amazon and the University of Minnesota, as well as Mikhail Belkin from the University of California San Diego, will be presenting at the Graduate hotels in Minneapolis, MN. For further details, visit the website and secure your spot by registering HERE!

28th Annual IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Virtual Conference

September 23rd to 27th, 2024

Venue: Virtual

The 28th Annual IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Virtual Conference is happening from September 23rd to 27th, 2024. They are seeking submissions showcasing advancements in High-Performance Computing, AI/Machine Learning, and more. 

Submission deadline: July 7, 2024. Don't miss this chance to contribute to cutting-edge computing technology! 

For details, visit the conference website.

Learn more about IEEE

Learning Resources

Request:

Are you interested in or already looking into a UMN specific instance of a Large Language Model (LLM) like ChatGPT for productivity or research?

Email the DSI to join our working group! [email protected]

HPC for Ag: Breaking the Compute Barrier, Upskilling Agri-Food Researchers to Utilize HPC Resources

When: Mondays 10:30 - Noon from September 16 - November 18

If you are a researcher that works in the Agri-food domain (e.g., breeder, molecular biologist, food scientist, socioeconomist), you know a little bit of programming (e.g., in R and/or Python), but you feel a little limited (e.g., some of your calculations run for days on your laptop), then you could benefit from this course. We wish to show you how to step up to the next level, improve your coding efficiency, and make use of High Performance Computing (HPC) and Cloud resources readily available to you.

TOPICS COVERED: The upcoming event will delve into several key topics, including "HPC for Ag: Breaking the Compute Barrier" and "Upskilling Agri-Food Researchers to Utilize HPC Resources." Additionally, participants will gain insights into "Intro to Cloud Computing," "HPC Basics," "Expanding HPC Skills," "Computer Science for the Agri-Food researcher," and "HPC and Cloud Concepts." Moreover, discussions will encompass "Computer Hardware and Resources" pertinent to this event, fostering a comprehensive understanding of high-performance computing and its application in agricultural research. 

Register now for the HPC for Ag Course 

Funding Opportunities and Deadlines

If you are interested in any of these or other data science related opportunities and need help organizing your submission or finding the right team please contact us, we’re here to help!

Upcoming Funding

• NSF MFAI: Mathematical Foundations in AI Deeper mathematical understanding is essential to ensuring that AI can be harnessed to meet the future needs of society and enable broad scientific discovery, while forestalling the unintended consequences of a disruptive technology. The overall goal is to establish innovative and principled design and analysis approaches for AI technology using creative yet theoretically grounded mathematical and statistical frameworks, yielding explainable and interpretable models that can enable sustainable, socially responsible, and trustworthy AI. Full proposal due: Oct. 10th, 2024
• NSF Campus Cyberinfrastructure: The Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*) program invests in coordinated campus-level cyberinfrastructure improvements, innovation, integration, and engineering for science applications and distributed research projects. Projects that help overcome disparities in cyber-connectivity associated with geographic location, and thereby advance the geography of innovation and enable populations based in these locales to become more nationally competitive in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research and education are particularly encouraged. Deadline: Oct. 15th, 2024
• DARPA SOMNUS: This program focuses on the identification of molecules and mechanisms of host interactions with the gut microbiome that are associated with the restorative effect of sleep on cognitive performance. To achieve this goal, funded studies will utilize an animal model of acute sleep deprivation and recovery, perform cognitive assessments that empirically assess the impact of sleep deprivation on performance, and collect biospecimens to generate a dataset that enables identification of pathways between the gut and the brain that correlate with changes in sleep pressure and cognitive function. Deadline: June 17th, 2024
• NEH Digital Humanities: The Digital Humanities Advancement Grants program (DHAG) supports innovative, experimental, and/or computationally challenging digital projects, leading to work that can scale to enhance scholarly research, teaching, and public programming in the humanities. Deadline: June 13th, 2024

Upcoming Deadlines

• NOAA RESTORE: May 23, 2024
• DARPA ARC opportunity: QUAntum Materials Engineering using eLEctrOmagNetic fields (QUAMELEON). Abstracts accepted until June 3, 2024
• NSF: Developmental Science research. Due July 30th, 2024 (and also Jan. 30th, 2025)
• NEH: The Dangers and Opportunities of Technology: Perspectives from the Humanities. Due Sept. 12, 2024

For students:

• The NSF PACK fellowship: The PACK fellowship is a graduate student opportunity to conduct research at the University of Kiel, Germany for 3 weeks. Applicants from any science or engineering discipline are encouraged to apply now!