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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.
July 17, 2024
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Survey Finds UW-Madison Community Values Open Source
This spring, the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) surveyed the UW–Madison campus community to gauge the use of open-source tools, identify open-source projects, and collect feedback on improving the open-source environment on campus. Among their findings: 60% of respondents said that having a vibrant open-source culture is very valuable, but only 31% agreed that this culture exists at UW-Madison.
OSPO worked with the Data Science Institute to create a website that summarizes the survey results. Additionally, OSPO has made this survey, and the tool to analyze the results, open source. Their hope is that other universities will use it and share their results, leading to a broader understanding of open source in academia. With support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, OSPO is positioned to support and grow a vibrant open-source ecosystem at UW–Madison. Learn more at ospo.wisc.edu.
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Learn to Work with Genomics Data in Data Carpentry Workshop
Data Carpentry’s aim is to teach researchers basic concepts, skills, and tools for working with data so that they can get more done in less time, and with less pain. This workshop, which will be held August 5-8 and 12-13, teaches data management and analysis for genomics research including: best practices for organization of bioinformatics projects and data, use of command-line utilities, use of command-line tools to analyze sequence quality and perform variant calling, connecting to and using cloud computing, and using R for data analysis and visualization. See the workshop website for more info, including registration.
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DSI Shares Research at SciPy 2024
The Data Science Institute was well-represented at last week’s SciPy 2024 conference in Tacoma. Research Scientist Matthew Feickert served on the event organizing committee and presented an update on the Journal of Open Source Software. Director Kyle Cranmer gave a keynote presentation: “Particles, People, and Pull Requests,” which illustrated how the statistical challenges in the search for the Higgs boson and exotic new physics at the Large Hadron Collider led to new approaches to collaborative, open science. SciPy is a community dedicated to the advancement of scientific computing through open-source Python software for mathematics, science, and engineering.
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In collaboration with MadAI and the Open Source Program Office, the ML+X community invites both beginner and advanced machine learning (ML) practitioners to join the 2024 Machine Learning Marathon (MLM24)! Running from September 12 to December 12, this 12-week hackathon offers real-world ML projects catering to different skill levels, application areas, and ML/AI methods. Many of the challenges are inspired by or directly sourced from research applications here at UW-Madison! Participants will form local or remote teams of 2-5 members, dedicating at least 3 hours/week to complete their chosen challenge, with the potential to win prizes. Weekly “sprint” events will facilitate knowledge exchange and discussion on ML tools and strategies. Each team will also be paired with an advisor to guide their progress. To learn more and register by 9/10, visit the 2024 Machine Learning Marathon webpage.
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Aug 22, 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.; Orchard View Room, Discovery Building; Designed for researchers and data enthusiasts, this lesson will cover the fundamentals of the Julia programming language, emphasizing its high-performance capabilities and ease of use for scientific computing. Participants will gain hands-on experience through guided exercises, preparing them to leverage Julia for their data analysis and computational tasks. Visit the Julia registration page to learn more.
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SSCC Workshops
The Social Science Computing Cooperative (SSCC) is hosting a variety of workshops this month. Topics, dates & times, locations, and event links are below. Introductory workshops are designed to be taken before and in conjunction with the Data Wrangling workshops. Learn more about the SSCC at the SSCC website.
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Library Micro-Courses
Online, Asynchronous
The UW Library system offers online, asynchronous micro-courses that cover topics often not taught in classrooms. Current courses discuss intellectual property, responsible data planning, patents, grants, data management, and social justice. These courses are short, interactive and available to be completed at your own pace. For more information and access to the full course list, visit the library micro-course 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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Summer SILO Seminar
July 17, 4:00 p.m.; Memorial Union Beefeaters Room. Come join UW-Madison SILO at the union for their weekly seminar series on topics related to systems, information, learning, and optimization! This week there are two speakers: Vanessa Sawkmie discusses a two-stage stochastic programming model in undersea warfare, and Jeff Linderoth will speak about his research in probing-enhanced stochastic programming. Previous topics include Gaussian process models, tensor decompositions, and high dimensional statistics.
If you can't make it this week, check back again, as this group meets nearly every Wednesday at 4:00 p.m. at the Memorial Union. For more information about SILO and to join their email list, visit the SILO website.
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Computer Science Seminar
Tomorrow, July 18th, 2:00:00 p.m.; 4310 Computer Sciences and online. Join guest Nengkun Yu from Stonybrook for his talk entitled A Tale of Quantum State Complexity and Learning. Yu will help you develop your understanding of quantum devices by emphasizing the importance of testing unknown quantum states. Furthermore, the talk will derive the optimal strategy to learn more information about these quantum Markov states. For more information about the seminar, including the like to watch on Zoom, visit the event posting.
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Help Build Community Around Applied Machine Learning
The ML+X community is seeking additional members to join its leadership team! Members of the leadership team will have the opportunity to help grow and sustain a lively and engaged machine learning (ML) community of practice, ensuring that practitioners across campus have ample opportunities to discuss modeling challenges, learn from one another, and support each other’s work. Anyone who is passionate about ML and communal learning (including students!) is welcome to join the leadership team.
— No minimum experience in ML is required. We are particularly seeking increasing representation from the Digital Humanities, Psychology, Math, Political Science, Chemistry, and more. If interested, please fill out the ML+X leadership application form.
Feel free to contact endemann@wisc.edu if you have any questions or require additional information.
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Women in Science, Math, and Engineering Badger Talk
This Friday, July 19, 1:00 p.m.; 219 Park St, Oregon, WI. Badger Talks connect relevant topics and research being conducted at UW-Madison with the greater Wisconsin community. Join Vicki Bier in Oregon for her talk about women in STEM. Through her research, Bier has studied how social factors such as stereotypes affect women's achievements in science, as well as ways to support women in the workplace and community. For more information about this talk and other talks occurring, visit the Badger Talks website.
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PROFESSIONAL
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Data Engineer
Apply by July 28 – The University of Wisconsin Institute on Aging is searching for a data science engineer to assist with their Midlife in the US (MIDUS) study on aging. The position largely involves cleaning and visualizing data from their MIDUS Biomarker project, using varied tools to analyze the raw data and prepare for release.
Requirements
- Bachelor's or graduate degree in data science, statistics, or related field
- Interest in population health or epidemiology
- Experience with SPSS, Python, and REDCap
Responsibilities
- Perform cleaning, quality control, and integration of large data sets
- Oversee staff and assist collaboration
- Suggest technologies or research techniques to study leaders
Read the full position description and apply at the job posting on the Jobs at UW portal.
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STUDENT
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Student Data Scientist
Apply by July 31 - The Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders is hiring an undergraduate or Master's student in data science or computer science. They are in search of a student to assist in developing machine learning models in order to classify audio soundscapes to apply to hearing loss research. This position is in association with the Soundscape and Audiology Research Lab, and could potentially lead to published research.
Requirements
- Interest in sound and auditory perception
- Experience with Python and Matlab
- Current student at UW majoring in data science, computer science, or related field
Position Summary
- Up to 10 hours/week, remote or in-person
- Starting 8/1/24
Read the full position description and apply at the job posting on the student jobs website.
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DATA VISUALIZATION OF THE WEEK
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The Science of Climate Change: Precipitation ( paper) Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
In recent months, it seems like the precipitation in Wisconsin has been never ending. Researchers at UW-Madison's Center for Climatic Research at the Nelson Institute have predicted how these trends will increase in the following years. The data, sourced from the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts, reflects the sharp increase in days per year with over two inches of rainfall. WICCI predicts that there will be a 30% increase in these extreme rainfall events over the next 20 years.
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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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