Rice’s first ‘Data Science Meet-up’ Sept. 25 at BRC

The Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology will host Rice’s first Data Science Meet-up from 1 to 5 p.m. Sept. 25 at the BioScience Research Collaborative’s exhibition hall.

The theme of the event is “meet your colleagues.” Organizers said they plan to highlight unique data science assets at Rice in the hopes of spurring collaborations that lead to new educational offerings and position the university to win additional research funding.

Faculty-led research groups are encouraged to prepare a poster highlighting their research for Rice's first Data Science Meet-up Sept. 25 at the BioScience Research Collaborative.

Kennedy Institute Co-director Keith Cooper, who was recently appointed to help lead the institute’s new efforts in data science, said the field is broad and applies to many disciplines other than computer science and engineering.

“Data science is the extraction of knowledge from both structured and unstructured data,” Cooper said. “The goal is to develop and apply new methods and techniques that allow researchers to probe databases and discover new knowledge and insights.”

Faculty-led research groups are encouraged to prepare a poster highlighting their research. Due to space limitations, only one poster per research group will be accepted, but event organizers said they hope that all research group members, including faculty, postdoctoral researchers, graduate students and research staff, will attend the event for the purpose of networking and collaborating.

Faculty and researchers are encouraged submit a brief abstract online by 8 a.m. Sept. 21 at https://k2i.wufoo.com/forms/data-science-meet-up-registration/.

Research group posters should be 4 feet by 4 feet and may showcase an existing research program, an emerging research idea or a data source to which the group already has or can gain access.

“There is no limit to the scope of the abstracts,” Cooper said. “Any and all ideas are welcome, and we are particularly interested in new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration in the areas of health, humanities, urban systems, education, energy, business and public policy.”

The Data Science Meet-up is co-sponsored by the Kennedy Institute, the Center for Research Computing, Fondren Library,  the Humanities Research Center and the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering.

For more information, visit: http://dsmeetup.rice.edu.

Rice’s first ‘Data Science Meet-up’ Sept. 25 at BRC