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Data Science Updates is the University of Wisconsin-Madison's resource for news, training, events, and professional opportunities in data science, brought to you by the Data Science Institute, powered by American Family Insurance, and the Data Science Hub.
January 8, 2025
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Learn Fundamental Research Computing Skills
Software Carpentry
January 13-16, 9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.; Zoom. Software Carpentry aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain by teaching research computing skills. This hands-on workshop will cover introductory concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management, and task automation teaching tools such as the Unix shell, Git/GitHub, and Python. This workshop is for beginners wanting to get started using these tools and requires no prerequisite knowledge. Register for the workshop on the Software Carpentry workshop website.
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Health Sciences Data Carpentry
January 21-24, 9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.; Zoom. Data Carpentry teaches fundamental data skills needed to conduct research. This workshop is aimed at Health Science researchers, teaching them how to work with data from project organization in spreadsheets, data cleaning with OpenRefine, data analysis with SQL and R, and data visualization in R. This workshop is for beginners wanting to get started using these tools and requires no prerequisite knowledge. Register for the workshop on the Health Sciences Data Carpentry workshop website.
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Present your Work at the Research Bazaar: Apply by Jan. 22
Researchers, students, and professionals at all levels of expertise are invited to showcase their work at the 6th annual Data Science Research Bazaar, March 19-20 at the Discovery Building. Submissions for data-science-focused lightning talks, posters, workshops, and interactive discussions are due January 22. (Please note the new deadline.)
This year’s theme is AI and ML in Research: Navigating Opportunities and Boundaries, and we welcome presentations that explore both the potential and limitations of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in research. While AI/ML will be a key focus, we encourage submissions from all areas of fundamental and applied data science and computational work.
The Research Bazaar is an opportunity to connect with, learn from, and contribute to UW–Madison’s ever-expanding data science research community. Learn more and apply on the Data Science Research Bazaar webpage.
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Open Source Internship Applications Due Jan. 27
In collaboration with Madison College, the UW-Madison Open Source Program Office (OSPO) is establishing a new internship program for students to participate in open source software projects each semester. Applications for the Spring 2025 cohort are due January 27. Undergrads and grad students with at least one semester left in their degree programs are eligible to apply. The internships have unique start and end dates, roughly beginning in February and ending in May.
Interns will learn crucial skills related to managing open-source software projects and growing software user communities. These paid internships are appropriate for students with a variety of experience levels, from those new to programming and open source to those who have more advanced skills. During the internships, students will join a mentored open-source project or develop a proposal for a self-directed project. They will participate in an initial training session and weekly check-ins with the Open Source Program Office.
Learn more about the program and how to apply on the OSPO website.
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Introduction to R
January 13, 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.; Zoom. Participate in this workshop for an introduction to the basics of the RStudio interface and the R language, with topics including creating and running scripts, saving your work, using functions, and installing packages. There will be opportunities to apply what we learn during class time. To learn more and register, visit the Introduction to R calendar listing.
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Introduction to Stata
January 13, 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.; Zoom. In this class you'll learn the basics of how Stata works and how to use it. This class (or comparable experience) is a prerequisite for the rest of SSCC's Stata training. It will also prepare you to excel in classes that use Stata, like Sociology 361 or Economics 410. We suggest new graduate students consider taking this class before or during their first semester. To learn more and register, visit the Introduction to Stata calendar listing.
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Data Wrangling in R
January 14 - January 17, 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.; Zoom. "Data wrangling" is the process of preparing data for analysis. This is a hands-on class with time devoted to practicing essential data wrangling skills. This course will first cover tools needed to work with different types of data. Then we will apply these tools in the context of datasets to create, transform, and clean variables. We will also restructure datasets by taking subsets, combining multiple datasets, summarizing datasets, and changing how datasets are organized.
This workshop assumes you have a working knowledge of the RStudio interface and that you understand the basics of the R language. This workshop has sessions on multiple days and you should plan to attend all the sessions. To learn more and register, visit the Data Wrangling in R webpage.
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Data Wrangling In Stata
January 14 - January 16, 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.; Zoom. In this class you'll learn how to wrangle data using Stata. We'll cover some of the key concepts and workflows of data science as well as the structure and logic of Stata. We'll emphasize real-world issues like handling missing data and checking for errors, as well as best practices for research computing and reproducibility. Our goal is give you a strong foundation you can build on to become an expert data wrangler.
Students should take SSCC's Introduction to Stata or have equivalent experience before taking this class. To learn more and register, visit the Data Wrangling In Stata webpage.
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A Step-by-Step Approach to Integrating AI in Your Course
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Data Visualization in R: GGplot2 Basics
January 28, 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.; 3218 Sewell Social Sciences. This workshop will teach you how to create and modify data visualizations using ggplot2, a popular plotting package in R. Emphasis is placed on using plots to understand distributions of different numbers and types of variables.
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R Programming: R Basics
January 31, 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m; Zoom. The Libraries will be providing R and Python workshops during the spring 2025 semester. The first workshop is for the absolute beginner wanting to slowly walk through the process of getting started with R, a programming language commonly used for data analysis. The session will introduce you to the RStudio interface for coding in R. We will work through setting up a project directory, cover key concepts and terminology, and load and inspect a dataset. For more information, to register, and view the spring semester schedule, visit the Steenbock Library webpage.
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Have questions about anything data science-related? Come see the Data Science Hub facilitators at Coding Meetup on Thursdays from 2:30-4:30 p.m. CT. To join Coding Meetup, join data-science-hubgroup.slack.com
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Mechanism of Nucleosome Invasion and Binding Specificity of Pioneer Factors
January 13, 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m; 1211 Biochemistry Colloquium. Join Dr. Lu Bai, Professor at Penn State Bai Lab, in a discussion of interest to many in the transcriptional mechanisms community. Dr. Bai uses a combination of quantitative imaging, genetics, genomics and computational methods to understand how chromatin structure regulates gene expression in both yeast and mammalian culture.
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Cell Dynamics In Developmental Systems
Application deadline - January 15, event March 31 - April 4; Paris. The Qlife program in Quantitative Biology of the PSL University organizes a spring school focused on recent technological developments in sequencing, imaging and image analysis. The school will cover these emerging approaches in a series of introductory lectures in the mornings, followed by digital workshops in the afternoons, using datasets from Drosophila, ascidians and mammals. The evenings will include keynote speaker seminars and poster presentations by the students.
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Love Data Week: 2025 Data Viz Championship
UW–Madison students, faculty, and staff are invited to showcase their data visualization skills and compete for the 2025 Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) Data Viz Champion title during Love Data Week, February 10-14, 2025. 2025 Data Viz Championship entries due on January 9.
Students must use the U.S. National Park Visit Data in context to produce a data visualization for submission. Faculty and staff may submit an existing visualization in their area of expertise, or they may create a visualization using the theme of the Big Ten. For more information and to submit your data visualization, visit the Data, Academic Planning & Institutional Research website.
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Ethics, Values, Information, and Law (EVIL) Reading Group
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Nexus Winter Challenge: Share ML/AI Resources and Win Prizes!
Nexus is the ML+X community’s website for crowdsourcing machine learning (ML) and AI resources —such as recorded talks, ML/AI libraries, genAI tools, model-use guides, datasets (e.g., for transfer learning), workshop materials, and more. Since launching in summer 2024, Nexus has quickly grown to feature 40 ML/AI resources in total — thanks, contributors! While this number is an impressive milestone, we'd love to see additional ML/AI practitioners contribute and fully leverage Nexus for their own needs/purposes. To incentivize additional contributions over winter, we are thrilled to offer a $50 Amazon gift card to whoever contributes the greatest number of resources by February 3rd. This is only intended as an extra incentive, as the real prize is helping to build a stronger, more connected community of ML/AI practitioners on campus! Visit the How to Contribute page for detailed guidance on contributing. If you’re unsure about the scope (most submissions are accepted) or have other questions—please contact endemann@wisc.edu.
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2025 National Big Data Health Science Student Case Competition
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Apply by January 29 - The University of South Carolina's Big Data Health Science Center is hosting their 6th annual Student Case Competition, a virtual event in which students compete in teams to solve an issue in healthcare using big data analytics for a chance to win cash prizes. The Big Data Health Science Student Case Competition is intended to provide enthusiastic teams of graduate and senior undergraduate students with the opportunity to apply their knowledge to analyzing big datasets in health care.
Each participating team will analyze the case and datasets to be released on Friday, February 7th, 2025, at noon EST. Through February 9th, team members will work together to present their methods, analyses, and results at the Big Data Health Science Center Case Competition virtually. A panel of industry and academic experts will judge the presentations based on each team’s use of full analytics tools/processes, from framing the problem to data use, model building, innovation, and communicating the solutions to decision-makers. View the flyer for more details about this event.
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Family Health Quantitative Research Assistant
Apply by January 18 - Dr. Nisreen M.Alnuaimi, Postdoctoral Trainee in the UW-Madison School of Nursing, is hiring a Student Research Assistant to support a research study on parental bonding with preterm infants at home. The position will track participants in the study, send out surveys, and work on preliminary data analysis. Specific duties includes: data management, cleaning data, drafting a quantitative data codebook, coding data, merging data sets and creating subsets of data, and assisting with a literature review. To learn more and apply, visit the Family Health Quantitative Research Assistant posting on the Student Jobs board.
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Project Assistant (PA) - Data, Academic Planning & Institutional Research
The focus of this role will be quantitative and qualitative analysis, but it may include managing all phases of the survey administration process, including preparing reports to inform leadership and promote the deliberate use of data across the institution. The PA will also design, collect, analyze, and research institutional data and prepare and disseminate institutional statistical reports to institutional programs, working units, and leadership. To learn more and apply, visit the Data, Academic Planning & Institutional Research PA position on the Student Jobs board.
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Corporate Sustainability Internship Program - Summer 2025
Apply by March 1 - The University of Wisconsin–Madison Corporate Sustainability Internship Program is a summer-long internship program that provides UW–Madison students with real-world sustainability experience in a corporate environment.
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Postdoctoral Opportunity in Healthcare Data Science @ University of Illinois Chicago
Appointments will be for a 2-year period. The Postdoctoral Research Associate will also be affiliated with the AI.Health4All Center and is expected to participate in monthly seminars with other postdoctoral research associates in the UIC College of Medicine. To learn more and apply, visit the UIC job posting.
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Wisconsin Health Data Hub Program Manager
Apply by January 12 - The UW School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) is seeking a visionary and experienced Program Manager to lead our new Wisconsin Health Data Hub (WHDH). The Wisconsin Health Data Hub Program Manager will oversee the strategic direction, execution, and delivery of the WHDH projects. This role requires an experienced leader with a deep understanding of healthcare systems, health data, exceptional project management skills, and the ability to drive cross-functional collaboration. For more information and to apply, visit the program manager job posting.
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Research Coordinator
Apply by January 26 - The Department of Radiology, School of Medicine & Public Health, is seeking a Research Coordinator who will serve as data steward for radiomics (machine learning in radiology imaging) projects ongoing in Dr. Pallavi Tiwari's lab. The Research Coordinator will be responsible for being the point person regarding data acquiring, deidentification, clinical data management, and database upkeep of an ever-growing repository of medical imaging and clinical information for a variety of diseases (e.g., brain tumors, stroke, Alzheimer's, MS, breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, and liver disease), as well as coordinating data-related efforts across different multi-site collaborations. For more information and to apply, visit the research coordinator job posting.
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DATA VISUALIZATION OF THE WEEK
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Change in Sales for Various Alcoholic Drinks and Mocktails in San Francisco From 2023 to 2024
Below is a visualisation created by Emma Stiefel. In her article " Red wine sales are tanking at S.F. restaurants: ‘We’ve never seen anything like this’," Esther Mobley discusses the significant decline in red wine sales at San Francisco restaurants. The trend is being attributed to shifts in consumer preferences, particularly among younger diners, who increasingly gravitate toward lighter, more refreshing wines such as rosé and sparkling wines. Additionally, non-alcoholic options are gaining popularity, reflecting broader concerns over health, wellness, and climate change.
Wine experts have noted that red wines, which were once the dominant choice, are now being pushed to the periphery of wine lists, as diners seek alternative choices. These changes are most visible in casual dining and mid-tier restaurants, where lighter wines are more in line with the current trends in food pairings and dining experiences. While red wine is still beloved by many, the overall market shift is undeniable.
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Data Science Updates is a collaborative effort of the Data Science Institute and Data Science Hub.
Use our submission form to send us your news, events, opportunities and data visualizations for future issues.
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