Dear Northeast Hub Community,
As the year draws to a close, we reflect on our good fortune to collaborate with all of you; to see the progress in our existing endeavors; and to be able to launch a number of new, exciting projects.
Community Building: In an ongoing effort to build community and get the word out about the Hub, we've participated in, facilitated, and presented at 20+ events during the past year. We also brought 40+ new organizations into our circle across industry, academia, non-profits and government.
Spoke Projects: Our three Spoke Projects in Health, Education, and Data Sharing have made great progress in the past year. Big Data for Education will hold their next meeting in February, and we'll provide updates from Data Sharing and Health at our Annual Summit in March of next year.
2017 Spoke Solicitation: The Northeast Hub worked extensively to guide new Spoke Project proposers throughout the application process for the 2017 NSF Big Data Spoke solicitation. A large number of very strong proposals were submitted. We're hoping to hear back from NSF on awards in the first half of 2018.
New Projects: Based on opportunities identified in year 1, and feedback from our stakeholder community, the Northeast Hub advanced planning activities on projects to support the Big Data innovation ecosystem:
- We're organizing two Workshops on Cybersecurity Risk Assessment, to explore the development of a Cybersecurity Risk Data Resource.
- We're advancing discussions with stakeholders across the transportation ecosystem to explore the development of a Transportation Data Resource.
- We're launching Phase I of the Big Data Map & Assets Platform (BDMAP), an open online platform for sharing data sets together with well-defined, domain-specific tasks derived from target stakeholders, in a way that facilitates collaboration between domain experts and data scientists.
We'll keep you posted as these projects move forward.
To wrap up the summary of an eventful year, we're happy to announce that Katie Naum has been promoted to Manager of Operations. As those of you who have worked with her know, she was already doing a fantastic job as our Program Coordinator, taking on many more responsibilities than her original position required. In her new role, Katie will continue to work with many of you in familiar ways, and will also manage the day-to-day operations and communications of the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub.
Please join us in congratulating Katie!
We wish you and yours the very best for the holidays and the new year!
René and Kathy
