CDSDS Director selected to participate in a National Science Foundation IdeasLab

May 15, 2019

The director of this center, Bryan Heidorn was selelected to be a participant in a National Science Foundation (NSF) strategic planning event, May 20-25, 2019. Each of the 30 particpants in the IdeasLab was selected based on a big ideas proposal submitted to NSF.  Dr. Heidorn's, "Idea" is a system to integrate big data and processing capacity from the hundreds of biological field stations that are scattered around the world.

Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR): Institutes for Data-Intensive Research in Science and Engineering - Ideas Labs  (I-DIRSE-IL).

NSF’s Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR) Big Idea is a national-scale activity to enable new modes of data-driven discovery that will allow fundamental questions to be asked and answered at the frontiers of science and engineering. Through this NSF-wide activity, HDR will generate new knowledge and understanding, and accelerate discovery and innovation. The HDR vision is realized through an interrelated set of efforts in:

  • Foundations of data science;
  • Algorithms and systems for data science;
  • Data-intensive science and engineering;
  • Data cyberinfrastructure; and
  • Education and workforce development.

The overarching goal of the HDR Institutes DIRSE Ideas Labs is to foster convergent approaches to enable data-intensive research in science and engineering through a series of facilitated activities bringing together scientists and engineers working on important data-intensive science and engineering problems with data scientists, e.g., computer and computational scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, and information scientists with expertise in different aspects of modeling and data analysis as well as systems and cyberinfrastructure specialists with expertise in open source software development, reproducibility, and transfer learning.  The Ideas Labs will focus on areas that: (1) are at a “tipping point” where a timely investment in data-intensive approaches has the maximum potential for a transformative effect; (2) have needs that can benefit from interdisciplinary investments in data analytics infrastructure; and (3) represent investment priorities for NSF science and engineering directorates during, and beyond, the lifetime of the HDR Big Idea.

Information for this news item was drawn from the NSF's program annnouncment that can be found at: https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=505614