Data Science Education and Workforce | South Big Data Innovation Hub

DATA SCIENCE EDUCATION & WORKFORCE OVERVIEW

The ability to utilize and understand data is an increasingly critical skill for the evolving 21st century workforce, as espoused in studies and reports by National Academies and Federal Agencies. Because data literacy at multiple levels is now needed in almost every technical and business sector, there is a severe shortage in skilled workforce to meet current and emerging demands. To combat this shortfall, an all hands on deck approach is needed. K-12 systems, colleges and universities, including community colleges, underrepresented groups, and women must be engaged in data science training for the modern workplace.

IMPACT

$280,000+ in funding for students to gain real-world data-related career experience
Data science training workshops at 7 minority-led, -serving, primarily teaching institutions, community colleges and four-year liberal arts colleges
100+ direct and indirect learners who benefited from workshops/bootcamps, modules, and courses taught by DataUp trained faculty members

VIEW ABOUT OUR WORK IN DATA SCIENCE EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

iCompBio REU and Workshop Provides Training to Students and Faculty

In the week of July 29-Aug 2, 2019, more than 50 faculty and students from more 21 institutions participated in two R bootcamps at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). The iCompBio REU is supported by NSF Award 1852042, REU Site: ICompBio – Engaging Undergraduates in Interdisciplinary Computing for Biological Research. The first bootcamp on data wrangling using R was taught by Hong Qin, a computational biologist at UTC. Materials for this R Data Wrangling bootcamp is available at a public GitHub repository https://tinyurl.com/UTC-R-camps2019. The second bootcamp, Electronic Health Records, was taught by Elvena Fong and Zhuqi Miao from the Center for Health Systems Innovation at the Oklahoma State University.

PEPI Builds Bridges Between Industry and Researchers

The South Big Data Hub’s Program to Empower Partnerships with Industry (PEPI) pairs early-career faculty and researchers throughout the South with Industry Partners and support their travel to make collaboration possible.

The HBCU Data Science Consortium

This project was an awardee of the 2020 South Big Data Hub SEEDS Program - Southern Engagement and Enrichment in Data Science. It was the single large award funded at $100K. The PIs seek to build a consortium that provides an accessible and beneficial platform within the HBCU community.

Data4Kids: Virtually Teaching Kids about Data Science

This project was an awardee of the 2020 South Big Data Hub SEEDS Program - Southern Engagement and Enrichment in Data Science. It is one of two awards funded in the Seed Grant's mid-range category of >$50,000. The PIs seek to launch a website that contains guides, videos, and other content to assist educators and instructors on teaching data science to their students.

The North Carolina Data Science Panel Series

This project was an awardee of the 2020 South Big Data Hub SEEDS Program- Southern Engagement and Enrichment in Data Science. It is one of three awards funded in the Seed Grant's small-range category of <$10,000. The PIs seek to showcase the different educational pathways that high school students can take to become a data scientist.

The Visualization and Data Reuse Challenge - Digital Rocks Portal

This project was an awardee of the 2020 South Big Data Hub SEEDS Program- Southern Engagement and Enrichment in Data Science. It is one of three awards funded in the Seed Grant's small-range category of <$10,000. The PIs seek to promote visualization and reuse of 3D images of porous materials that are stored in the open data repository Digital Rocks Portal (DRP).

2020 PEPI-G Fellows Selected

The Program to Empower Partnerships with Industry and Government (PEPI-G) supports faculty members, research scientists, postdocs, and graduate and undergraduate students (rising juniors and seniors as of 2020) from the 16 states that comprise the South Big Data Regional Innovation Hub (South BD Hub).

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.

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

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).

The DataUp Program: Faculty Development in Data Science

The DataUp Program allows academic institutions to apply to bring data science training capabilities to their campuses, thus expanding data science to more academic campuses across the South.