Data to Action Speaker Series: “Reflections on the U.S. Research Data Landscape: Evolving connections amongst Research Data Services, Data Stewardship, and Data Science” on Fri. Apr. 12th
The School of Informatics and Computing’s Data to Action (D2A) lab cordially invites you to attend the second event in its speaker series. We especially welcome students to attend, and we can arrange attendance-taking and reporting for class credit at an instructor’s request. For the detail, see the text below as well as the attached flyer.
WHO: Dr. Melissa Cragin, Executive Director of the Midwest Big Data Hub’
WHAT: Data to Action Lecture Series
WHEN: 1:00 PM on Friday, April 12th
WHERE: IT 152 / Live streaming is available: https://iu.zoom.us/j/224531522
Informal Gathering: There is another opportunity to informally interact with Dr. Melissa Cragin right after the talk, from 2:00 to 3:00 PM at IT 266. Students and faculty from other department across the campus are welcome to attend. Light refreshment and coffee will be served.
LECTURE TITLE
Reflections on the U.S. Research Data Landscape: Evolving connections amongst Research Data Services, Data Stewardship, and Data Science
LECTURE ABSTRACT
The research data landscape is seeing multi-dimensional changes and challenges, and building connections across existing “data ecosystem services” can be difficult. Solutions are necessary to protect research data for current and future active use, and to preserve representative datasets or products as archival records of discovery or significant cultural decisions. Changes across various ecosystems are bringing new strategic partnerships, advanced cyberinfrastructure services, and also uncertainty about outputs of scientific computation, scholarly behavior in the midst of “open science,” and evolving data policies. Non-governmental organizations and others are leveraging various partnership arrangements to meet community demands at scale; and infrastructure supported by federal investments are connecting the from campus level to national systems. Academic institutions of all types are grappling with the emergent field of “data Science.”
This talk will present examples of current efforts to meet new challenges and demand around research data, and also introduce the Midwest Big Data Hub (MBDH). One of four regional Big Data (BD) Innovation Hubs, the MBDH was launched in 2015 with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation. Based at the University of Illinois in Urbana- Champaign, the MBDH is a growing network of academic, industry, and non-governmental partners. The BD Innovation Hubs are intended to strengthen the data ecosystem, and develop effective networks of experts, organizations, projects and resources to address scientific and social issues of regional, national, and international interest. Examples of projects and activities will be included from across our priority areas of interest: Smart & Resilient Communities; Digital Agriculture; Water Quality; Big Data & Health; and, Advanced Materials & Manufacturing; and Data Science education and training.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Melissa Cragin is Chief Strategist for Research Data Service Initiatives with the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego. Most recently, she served as Executive Director of the regional Midwest Big Data Hub, based at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Prior to joining NCSA, Melissa was Staff Associate in the Office of the Assistant Director, Directorate of Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF), which followed her service there as an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow. While at NSF, she guided development of data policy in the BIO Directorate and accelerated community engagement on research data management and public access. Melissa has an affiliate appointment as Assistant Professor in the School of Information Sciences at UIUC, where she previously led the Data Curation Education Program.
ABOUT DATA TO ACTION
The Data to Action (DATA) Lab is an interdisciplinary team of SoIC faculty and student researchers who study the impact of data practices and labor in a variety of contexts. Data are empowering artifacts that, when properly collected, aggregated, managed, and analyzed, have immense value. Data can bring tangible reward to individuals, communities, organizations, and businesses. Our work characterizes data not only as a statistical input or technological byproduct, but as a socio-technical construction with inherent contradictions, problems, and ethical implications.
Leave a Reply