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.
February 21, 2024
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UW-Madison Launches RISE Initiative with AI Focus
At the February 8 Board of Regents meeting, Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin announced the new Wisconsin Research, Innovation and Scholarly Excellence (RISE) Initiative. RISE will focus on fields where UW–Madison has both people and research centers in place to make transformative discoveries and translate them into real-world impact. Artificial intelligence is the first focus of this initiative.
Advancing AI with RISE Initiative support will put UW–Madison in a leadership position in a field with runaway growth and import, while also expanding campus access to a tool that can boost almost any scholarly project. Read more about the RISE Initiative at the blog post.
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Apply for the American Family Funding Initiative by March 1
The American Family Funding Initiative is an internal funding competition offering up to $150K to stimulate and support cutting-edge research in the rapidly growing field of data science. American Family Insurance has partnered with UW–Madison through the Data Science Institute to provide this research funding opportunity. UW-Madison faculty and staff with permanent PI status are eligible to apply. Proposals are due March 1. Read more and apply for funding at the initiative's website.
The UW–Madison Data Science Institute, powered by American Family Insurance, aims to bring the power of data science to every discipline. Visit our website to learn how DSI can support your data science needs.
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At the second annual American Family Funding Initiative Networking Meeting, UW–Madison researchers shared their work with American Family Insurance business leaders.
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Generative AI Workshop with Google Cloud
March 8, Online & In-Person at the Computer Science Building (DoIT Room 3138A CS), Google innovation. Enterprise approach. GenAI tools being leveraged in secure, enterprise focused ways. Explore with Research Cyberinfrastructure how you can align on a strategic, campus wide approach to securely creating outcomes with GenAI. At this half-day workshop, you will learn about Google Generative AI from Google and UW-Madison Experts. View the agenda, register, and access the Zoom link at the event webpage.
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Workshop Series: Methods for Biological Data
February through May, Dr. Claudia Solis-Lemus and Dr. Emile Gluck-Thaler from Plant Pathology are hosting the workshop series "Methods for Biological Data" for Spring 2024. This interactive workshop will help students and postdocs engage with new methods for analyzing their data. All students and postdocs are welcome!
The workshops will take place on the first Wednesday of the next four months from 2-3:30 p.m. in 584 Ruseell Labs (Feb 7, March 6th, April 3, May 1st). Local and virtual speakers will be invited to demo new statistical and bioinformatic methods with opportunities for students/postdocs to try out the methods in real-time on their data.
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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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Next Generation Data Analysis Workshops
March and April, The Bioinformatics Resource Core (BRC) at the UW Biotechnology Center ( UWBC) is offering heavily hands-on workshops on Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) Data Analysis skills:
- Access and analyze data with bash command line
- SNP and RNA-Seq analysis examples with open-source software on a Linuxplatform
These day-long workshops are in-person sessions and do have a fee associated with them. Read workshops descriptions, access registration links, and view the calendar at the Bioinformatics website.
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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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Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
February 23, 2:25 p.m., 901 Van Vleck Hall, Rose Cersonsky from UW-Madison will talk about data-driven approaches to chemical and materials sciences. Cersonsky leads a research group at UW-Madison in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. The research group focuses on understanding the interplay between molecular and materials structure and properties, drawing concepts and techniques from crystallography and molecular simulation.
Abstract: Like many other fields, there has been a recent and overwhelming wave of machine learning and artificial intelligence methods being employed in the chemical sciences. While these methods have the undoubted ability to drive innovation and capabilities, their application to chemical sciences requires a nuanced understanding of molecular representations and structure-property relationships.
In this talk, I will discuss the role of molecular featurization – how we transform atoms and molecules into mathematical signals appropriate for machine-learning thermodynamic quantities – and unsupervised analyses that allow us to easily understand and assess these so-called “featurizations” in the context of complex machine learning tasks. In doing so, I will demonstrate how linear methods – that constitute the simplest, most robust, and most transparent approaches to automatically processing large amounts of data – can be leveraged to understand molecular crystallization and aid in pharmaceutical engineering.
All methods discussed are available through the open-source scikit-matter software, an official scikit-learn companion that implement methods born out of the materials and chemistry communities.
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Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Research Day
March 7, Online & In-Person at Union South, Google Cloud provides access to cutting-edge machine learning and AI tools, making it easy to apply advanced techniques for deeper insights and accelerated discovery. Researchers are using Google Cloud to predict sepsis in intensive care patients, analyze medical images faster and more easily, and advance research in climate change.
At the GCP Research Day, there will be presentations from Google about accelerating your research and AI in bioinformatics. UW researchers will present their work on using LLM in the GCP environment. UW-Madison will provide details about how these and similar tools are used and how you can get started using them. You will also learn about two UW-Madison initiatives designed to help reduce the cost of cloud computing: the NIH STRIDES program for biomedical researchers and the UW-Madison F&A pilot reduction for cloud computing costs.
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MadPy: The Evolution of the Transformer
March 14, 6:30 p.m., Madison Public Library - Central, Dive into the backstory of the most influential model in AI's history—the Transformer. In this talk, Ed Rogers traces the lineage of ideas and models that influenced the Transformer's design, showcasing how past challenges and solutions in machine learning, computer vision, and NLP contributed to its groundbreaking approach. Ideal for software engineers and technology enthusiasts looking to understand the build-up to the current AI renaissance. Register for the event at its Meetup page.
Ed Rogers is the Director of Data Science for Majesco, a global leader in cloud insurance software. He is also the organizer of MadPy, and a coordinating member of the organizing committee for SciPy Conference. Ed earned his PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois, where he deployed neural networks in the search for rare physics events at the largest US particle collider, Fermilab. Ed is a proud father of two, a devoted tea drinker, and can easily be drawn into long conversations about advanced analytics in baseball.
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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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MadData Hackathon
February 24-25, DotData is hosting their second annual MadData data hackathon. MadData is a competition focused on using data science techniques to solve a real-world issue in any discipline. Similar to hackathons, participants are responsible for creating a product that can solve practical problems. Final products include, but are not limited to, machine learning models, insights from statistical analysis, and business solutions based on predictive models. Read about the rules, schedule, and register all at the event webpage.
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EVIL in Spring 2024
March 8, 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 " Large image datasets: A pyrrhic win for computer vision?" and Tiny Image's response with additional supplemental reading. Learn more about the community and how to attend the meeting at the EVIL website
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PROFESSIONAL
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Data Scientist II
Apply by February 25 at 11:55 p.m. CT. The Wisconsin Reading Center is looking for a key role as a liaison with Flywheel software to participate in database implementation and management with a focus on ophthalmology. This involves the development and maintenance of AI models for workflow automation, AI gears development (Docker Containers), development of pipelines for scalable deployment, performance optimization, designing database queries for data retrieval, and developing semi-automated systems. This candidate would ensure security and compliance with technical standards, technical documentation, and develop metrics reporting templates.
Read about qualifications, responsibilities, and expectations, as well as apply at the job posting.
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STUDENT
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Technology, Data and Analytics Career Fair
This virtual career fair is open to all enrolled UW-Madison students and recent alumni with a registered handshake account interested in job functions/internships relating to:
Software Engineering, Data Analytics, Project Management, Software Development, Data Science, Business Analysts, Information Technology, Management/Technical Consulting, AI, Programming, Quantitative Research, UX/UI Design, etc. All Industries are welcome hiring within these job roles or those closely aligned.
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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.
Use our submission form to send us your news, events, opportunities and data visualizations for future issues.
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