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The Hubbub

Keep up with the latest in South Big Data Innovation Hub news!

 

The Hubbub! Blog showcases Hub projects, new partnerships, working group activities, news, event highlights, and other activities around the Hub; we also include guest blog posts from Hub members around the region.

The Keeping Data Science Broad Program

The Keeping Data Science Broad Program group pic
The series garnered community input into pathways for keeping data science as a discipline broadly inclusive. We gathered input from data science programs in any region across the nation, either traditional or alternative, and from a range of institution types including minority-serving institutions, community colleges, liberal arts colleges, tribal colleges, universities, and industry partners. The series consists of webinars, workshops, and programs exploring the future of data science education and workforce at institutions of higher learning that are primarily teaching-focused.

Working Group

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The South Hub has three Working Groups that engage directly with the Hub Community and the Executive Team to implement across hub activities. These groups are central to the Hub mission and are: (1) Education and Workforce Development, (2) All Hub Data Sharing & Cyberinfrastructure; and (3) Social Cybersecurity. Working Groups are distinct in that they provide a regular outlet for community demos, case studies, project development, and administering of services to the membership as a whole.

Using a Virtual Ecological Research Assistant (VERA) to explain the impact of social distancing

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COVID-19 continues to spread across the country and around the world. The current strategy for managing the spread of COVID-19 is social distancing, and a new white paper from Georgia Tech applies the use of an interactive Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool to conceptualize the impact of social distancing on the spread of COVID-19.

Social Cybersecurity WG

Social Cybersecurity WG

The Keeping Data Science Broad Program

The series garnered community input into pathways for keeping data science as a discipline broadly inclusive. We gathered input from data science programs in any region across the nation, either traditional or alternative, and from a range of institution types including minority-serving institutions, community colleges, liberal arts colleges, tribal colleges, universities, and industry partners. The series consists of webinars, workshops, and programs exploring the future of data science education and workforce at institutions of higher learning that are primarily teaching-focused.

SPOKE Project Addresses COVID-19 with VERA

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The NSF Spoke Project ‘Using Big Data for Environmental Sustainability: Big Data + AI Technology = Accessible, Usable, Useful Knowledge’ has repurposed VERA to model the effect of social distancing on the spread of COVID-19, including the SIR model of epidemiology. VERA enables a user to build conceptual models and agent-based simulations, and conduct “what if” virtual experiments.

The Program to Empower Partnerships with Industry and Government (PEPI-G) Applications CLOSED

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PEPI-G supports data faculty members, research scientists, postdocs, and graduate and undergraduate students from across the country in working on high level problems for the federal government. Our 2020 program partner is the Department of Homeland Security – Advanced Research Projects Agency (DHS-ARPA).

Large Scale Medical Informatics for Patient Care Coordination and Engagement

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This project brings together six universities to design and construct a patient-focused and personalized health system that addresses the fractured nature of healthcare information and the lack of engagement of individuals in their own healthcare. As its first pilot, the researchers will focus on African Americans and Hispanics/Latinos diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.

Using Big Data for Environmental Sustainability: Big Data + AI Technology = Accessible, Usable, Useful Knowledge

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This project brings together scientists from a dozen institutions in academia, government, and industry to translate big data into meaningful knowledge that supports research and education in environmental sustainability. The project will focus on the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), the world’s largest database of biological species, and other biodiversity data sources. This project has repurposed VERA to model the effect of social distancing on the spread of COVID-19, including the SIR model of epidemiology. VERA enables a user to build conceptual models and agent-based simulations, and conduct "what if" virtual experiments. We believe that this interactivity should be a significant boon for learning and education.

Smart Grids Big Data

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This project aims to increase our understanding of the merged data collected from physical systems in order to better understand how energy flows through grids, how to prevent emergencies such as blackouts and brownouts, and how to improve asset management and increase energy efficiency.