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 24, 2024
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Register for the Research Bazaar
Don't delay - register today for the Research Bazaar on February 7 and 8, 2024 at the Discovery Building. The event is filling up quickly, and many of our workshops and interactive discussions are near capacity.
With an overarching theme of Data in Action, the Research Bazaar is an inclusive, community-building event that encourages cross-pollination of ideas among researchers, data scientists, entrepreneurs, and community members, including students. The aim of this event is to foster a thriving data science community on campus and in the wider community, and to equip researchers from all career stages with the digital skills and tools required to do their work efficiently and equitably. Registration deadline: January 30. View the Research Bazaar schedule and register here.
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Researcher Toolkit
Spring semester may have gotten off to a slippery start, weather-wise, but that doesn’t mean your research has to waver. The Researcher Toolkit is a resource for UW-Madison faculty, staff, and students that can help you start and keep your research on track to success. It points to helpful resources for each phase of your research project, from planning to publishing your work. The Researcher Toolkit is a joint project between WID, the Data Science Hub, the Data Science Institute, the UW-Madison Libraries, and DoIT.
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Categorical Variables in R
January 30, 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m., Almost every dataset has categorical variables, and we use them in models and data visualizations. However, it can be difficult to understand how categorical variables are structured in R. This workshop hosted by the Social Science Computing Cooperative will help you understand how R represents categorical variables, and you will learn how to manipulate them by changing their order and labels. Register for the Categorial Variables in R workshop.
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Introduction to R
January 31, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m., This workshop hosted by the Social Science Computing Cooperative is 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 you learn during class time. Register for the Intro to R workshop.
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Introduction to Python for Data Analysis
January 31, 1:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m., In this workshop hosted by the Social Science Computing Cooperative you'll learn about the fundamental concepts and structures of Python as well as Pandas DataFrames. This workshop is a primarily intended to be taken in conjunction with the Data Wrangling in Python workshop (the Introduction covers the first three chapters of the SSCC's Data Wrangling in Python book). However, you might choose to take just the Introduction if you will be taking another class that uses Python, or if you're curious about Python and just want to get a sense of how it works before deciding whether to learn more. Register for the Python for Data Analysis workshop.
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Workshop Series: Python and R Programming Languages for Data Analysis
February and March, Learn programming skills for computational research during the R workshop series and the Python workshop series. Attend any or all of the sessions. Brought to you as a part of the UW Libraries Graduate Support workshop series. Open to all UW-Madison students, faculty, and staff. Location: Instruction online via Zoom with in-person help at satellite locations for some workshops.
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Have questions about anything data science-related? Come see the Data Science Hub facilitators at Coding Meetup on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:30-4:30 p.m. CT. To join Coding Meetup, join data-science-hubgroup.slack.com.
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Sharon M. Guten Colloquium Series: A Fruitful Reciprocity: The Cognitive-Neuroscience-AI Connection
January 25, 4:00 PM, The Department of Psychology is hosting a seminar as part of their Colloquium Series titled "A Fruitful Reciprocity: The Cogntive-Neuroscience-AI Connection" by Dr. Dan Yamins from Stanford University. Attend in-person in Room 338 in the Brogden Pyschology Building.
Abstract: The emerging field of Cognitive NeuroAI has leveraged techniques from artificial intelligence to model brain data. In this talk, I will show that the connection between cognitive neuroscience and AI can be fruitful in both directions. Towards "AI driving neuroscience", I will discuss a new candidate universal principal for functional organization in the brain, based on recent advances in self-supervised learning, that explains both fine details as well as large-scale organizational structure in the vision system, and perhaps beyond. In the direction of "cognitive neuroscience guiding AI", I will present a novel cognitively-grounded computational theory of perception that generates robust new learning algorithms for real-world scene understanding. Taken together, these ideas illustrate how neural networks optimized to solve cognitively-informed tasks provide a unified framework for both understanding the brain and improving AI.
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Genomics Seminar Series: Network inference from public datasets: A cheap and efficient approach to find novel transcriptional regulators
February 1, 1:30 PM, The Center for Genomic Science Innovation is hosting a seminar as part of their Genomics Seminar Series titled "Network inference from public datasets: A cheap and efficient approach to find novel transcriptional regulators" by Dr. Kranthi Varala from the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Purdue University. Attend in-person at the Biotechnology Center Auditorium (435 Henry Mall, Rm 1111) or on Zoom.
Abstract: Organ-specific gene expression datasets that include hundreds to thousands of experiments allow reconstruction of organ-level gene regulatory networks. However, creating such datasets is greatly hampered by the requirements of extensive and tedious manual curation. We trained a supervised classification model that can accurately classify the organ-of-origin for a plant transcriptome. This K-Nearest Neighbor-based multiclass classifier was used to create organ-specific gene expression datasets for the leaf, root, shoot, flower and seed in Arabidopsis thaliana. A gene regulatory network (GRN) inference approach was used to determine: i. influential transcription factors (TFs) in each organ and, ii. the most influential TFs for specific biological processes in that organ. These genome-wide, organ-delimited GRNs (OD-GRNs), recalled many known regulators of organ development and processes operating in those organs. Importantly, many previously unknown TF regulators were uncovered as potential regulators of these processes. As a proof-of-concept, we experimentally validated the predicted TF regulators of lipid biosynthesis in seeds. Of the top twenty candidate TFs, eight were known regulators of seed oil content, including WRI1, LEC1, and FUS3. Importantly, we validated five previously unknown TFs MybS2, TGA4, SPL12, AGL18 and DiV2 as regulators of seed lipid biosynthesis. We elucidated the molecular mechanism of MyB2 and show that it induces PAP family genes and lipid synthesis genes to enhance seed lipid content. This general approach has the potential to be extended to any species with sufficiently large gene expression datasets to discover novel regulators for any trait-of-interest.
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Data Science for Social Good
Why Apply?
- Real-world projects
- Cutting-edge data science
- Robust support structure
- Motivated team members
- Mentoring relationships
- Seattle summer (it’s amazing, FYI)
Applications are now open for our 2024 program. Accepting applications for:
- Student Fellows: Student Fellows Application - Open until 11:59 PST, February 12th
- Project Proposals: Community Project Proposal Submissions - Open until 11:59 PST, February 20th
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EVIL in Spring 2024
January 26, 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m., The Ethics, Values, Information, and Law (EVIL) reading group pursues scholarship in the intersections of ethics, law, and data and information technologies. The EVIL Reading group meets every three weeks (roughly), Fridays, online, and is hosted in collaboration with the iSchool and ML+X. This meeting discusses “ State v. Pickett" with additional supplemental reading. Learn more about the community and how to attend the meeting at the EVIL website.
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The Carpentries is seeking new members to bring additional diversity and expertise into its instructional community. Among other benefits, members have opportunities to advance their technical and teaching skills by attending computational workshops and participating in an optional instructor training program. Join the google group if interested in learning more!
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PROFESSIONAL
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Data Science Facilitator
Apply by January 24th at 11:55 CT. The Data Science Hub in the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID) collaborates closely with the Data Science Institute to provide data science training and implement data science into research practices across campus. The Data Science Hub is on the lookout for an additional data science facilitator to join the team! The facilitator will perform training and community engagement in data science across the UW-Madison campus. Explore the facilitator job listing for more information, and reach out to facilitator@datascience.wisc.edu with any questions.
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STUDENT
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SSEC Summer Programming Internship Program
This internship provides eleven highly motivated undergraduate or graduate students an opportunity to apply their coding abilities in support of cutting-edge atmospheric research. From year to year projects may include a combination of designing, monitoring, and debugging data ingest archival systems; creating and maintaining data analysis tools; and calibration, processing and visualization of atmospheric data collected from ground, aircraft or satellite based instrumentation in collaboration with partners and funders that include NOAA, NASA, NSF and DOE. For more information, visit the SSEC Summer Internship Program website.
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DATA VISUALIZATION OF THE WEEK
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Reposted from the Data Science Community Newsletter, an Academic Data Science Alliance project.
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The Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA) is a network of academic data science practitioners, educators, and leaders, and academic-adjacent colleagues, who thoughtfully integrate data science best practices in higher education. UW-Madison is a founding member of ADSA.
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Data Science Updates is a collaborative effort of the Data Science Institute and Data Science Hub.
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