My input to your chairs….if you have not yet sent me your CV or FAR, please do so ASAP. This provides me the best opportunity to showcase what you have contributed to SDS. Without your input, I will utilize the information that I have, but may not be able to truly represent your contributions. Please email them directly to me. Thanks to those that have already submitted.
As Spring Break approaches and COVID (hopefully) continues to decline, we are starting to host live events again. We have two conferences coming up (Women in Data Science and Analytics Frontiers). WiDS is a free event on March 15th and AF has a small registration fee for faculty. I’d encourage you to come to both. If you have problems finding funding for the $100 AF registration, please contact me. We have great speakers lined up for both sessions. Each is a one day event at the Marriott on campus.
Our Nominations Committee is starting to seek faculty candidates for several positions within the School. Please consider serving SDS when they have a call for nominations.
Enjoy your Spring Break!
-Doug
| | How to Know It’s Time to Update Your SDS Faculty Directory Listing | |
It may just be time to send us a new headshot! If your faculty profile and pictures are in need of an update, please submit this Google Form. This can include your job title, education, courses taught, biography, external organization & title (for adjunct faculty), headshot, etc. You can view your current listing on the SDS Faculty Directory here. Please also use the above form to indicate whether the School of Data Science has permission to feature you with our new Faculty Spotlight posts on our social media!
| | University Career Center - Professional Headshots | |
This is a great opportunity for faculty to update their headshots on the UNC Charlotte website and LinkedIn accounts. Having a professional headshot gives strength to your personal brand. | | Summer 2022 Course Development Opportunity | |
In line with the goals of the University’s General Education Resign that is currently underway, SDS is planning to launch an introductory data analysis course that would fulfill undergraduate students’ “Quantitative/Data” general education requirement starting in Fall 2023. We are seeking two faculty members to co-develop the course during summer 2022. Ideally, the team would include one faculty member from CCI and one faculty member from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. There is summer salary funding available for this work – one month of salary for each faculty member. Please reach out to Angela Berardinelli (aberardinelli@uncc.edu) for more information or to express interest in participating.
| | Data Science Faculty Research Award | |
Recognize an individual faculty member (core or affiliated) in the School of Data Science for his/her significant research achievements in the past calendar year.
Deadline for application submission: March 1, 2022,11:59EST
Notification of the award: April 1, 2022 (Fund available for spending between July 1, 2022~June 30, 2023)
| |
Given the much smaller number of applications for SDS seed grants for data science in the Spring than in the Summer, the research committee of the SDS has decided to skip the Spring funding cycle of the seed grant program and put all the resources for the Summer cycle. The call for proposals for Summer 2022 SDS seed grants will be released on Feb. 15, 2022 and will be due on March 30.
| | Women in Data Science - Tuesday, March 15 | |
The School of Data Science is honored to once again host Charlotte's Women in Data Science (WiDS) Conference. The global Women in Data Science initiative aims to inspire and educate data scientists worldwide, regardless of gender, and to support women in the field. This year, the conference will be an in-person event, and will feature industry and academic experts from across the region, highlighting groundbreaking research, innovative industry solutions, and more. The conference is targeted at students and new professionals.
The conference is free and open to all UNC Charlotte students, faculty and alumni. Space is limited for this conference. Please encourage students to register!
| | Analytics Frontiers Conference - March 31 | |
The Analytics Frontiers Conference is the largest data science conference in the region, attracting more than 500 thought leaders, scientists, and business executives from different industries and academia.
The Analytics Frontiers Conference, sponsored by UNC Charlotte, will feature tracks in Explainable AI, Ethics in AI, The Future of AI, AI Adoption, Natural Language Processing, Industry Case Studies and more.
SDS faculty & students will receive discount codes for registration via email next month!
| | SDS Faculty Meeting - April 11, 3:30-5:00pm | |
The SDS staff meeting will be on Monday, April 11 at 3:30pm to 5:00pm. The details of the meeting have not been finalized.
Stay tuned for more information!
| |
Conference at Ft. Bragg - April 5-6
Data Science AI Topics of Interest
| |
Ft. Bragg is hosting a conference, sponsored by AFCEA (Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association), with content relevant to the Data Science/AI/Cyber domain and the US Dept. of Defense. The AFCEA Technet Conference will be held on April 5-6 at Fort Bragg, NC. Conference tracks include:
- Artificial Intelligence
- Cloud
- Cyber
- Data
- Small Business
The event will provide an excellent opportunity to gain a current awareness of the needs and priorities of the defense community (particularly in the area of Special Operations) with regard to AI, Cyber, and Data Science (DOD). Such an awareness will enable better targeting of proposals and research topics to objectives in the DOD domain.
| | Access to the High Performance Cluster - Spring 2022 | |
If you are planning to use one or both of the HPC educational clusters for course sections during the Spring 2022 term, please use the link below to complete the account creation request form. More details can be found here.
| |
AWS Academy is a global program that provides educational institutions and educational nonprofits with access to an AWS-developed and authorized curriculum so they can more easily offer cloud computing courses to their students. By participating in AWS Academy, institutions can help students become proficient and certified on the use of Amazon Web Services (AWS) technology. SDS and UNC Charlotte hold an institutional membership. Faculty interested in being nominated for the academy should reach out to Josh Hertel, jhertel@uncc.edu.
| |
The IBM Academic Initiative provides professors and students access to the latest technologies in open source and IBM software, hardware, course materials, training, technical support, and other resources.
- IBM Cloud, available cloud resources (Hybrid Cloud, Kubernetes, OpenShift, etc.)
- Data and AI portfolio including Watson Studio, AutoAI, Blockchain, and IOT
- Introduction to freely available Data Science curricula
- Garage Method, Enterprise Design Thinking, and Cognos Analytics
| | CDC announces a new Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics | | The Center will bring together next-generation public health data, expert disease modelers, public health emergency responders, and high-quality communications, to meet the needs of decision-makers. | | NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Education and Mathematics Program | |
The National Science Foundation currently has a funding opportunity for low-income STEM students. Interested in submitting a proposal? Email Dongsong Zhang.
| | Specifying SDS as an Affiliate Center | |
When routing a proposal, please make sure to specify the School of Data Science as an affiliated center in the Niner Research system in addition to your home department, so that the school can keep track of the proposals submitted and awarded by our faculty. Instructions can be found on the Research tab of our website.
| | Wednesday SDS Seminars- 4:00-5:00 pm | |
Please Encourage Students to Participate. Each semester the SDS hosts regular professional development seminars on Wednesday afternoon. These sessions allow students to interact directly with companies and thought leaders across multiple domains in data science and analytics. Last week we featured the COO for local health analytics startup- Wellnecity. Coming up in two weeks we will feature Chris Black, Managing Partner with Generate, an executive search firm. Some of the upcoming sessions are listed below. You can find the full list here.
Starting in March the majority of our seminars will switch to in-person, held on the Center City campus/Dubois Center.
| | North Carolina Education Datathon | |
The Hunt Institute is pleased to announce the first-ever North Carolina Education Datathon on April 4-5, 2022, at the McKimmon Center in Raleigh, NC. This free, two-day event will bring together university researchers and student-led teams from across North Carolina to compete to turn publicly available data into actionable information to address inequities and improve educational outcomes. The winning team will receive a monetary prize. This year’s theme is Exploring the Relationship Between the Digital Divide and Postsecondary Educational Attainment.
| |
The SDS has developed a variety of Boot Camps to support new and continuing students. Currently we offer four online/asynchronous training and review modules: Introduction to Python, Statistics for Data Science, Introduction to R, and, as of this spring, Introduction to SAS For Data Science. We are discussing developing a new SQL bootcamp for fall 2023. The bootcamps are free and available to any student enrolled in in a SDS course. Registration for the spring semester SDS Boot Camps is currently open.
| | WiDS Datathon 2022: Using Data Science to Mitigate Climate Change | |
This year’s WiDS Datathon, organized by the WiDS Worldwide team, Harvard University IACS, and the WiDS Datathon Committee, will tackle a key way to mitigate the effects of climate change with a focus on energy efficiency. The WiDS Datathon Committee is partnering with experts from many disciplines at Climate Change AI, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and MIT Critical Data. WiDS Datathon participants will analyze regional differences in building energy efficiency, creating models to predict building energy consumption.
| | | | Follow us on social media! | | | | |
