We hope this newsletter finds you healthy and safe. Today marked the third and final day of the South Hub's virtual All Hands Meeting, where the National Science Foundation, all four of the regional hubs, and community members from across sectors participated in interactive sessions and networking. We were excited to share a sampling of our open-to-all, online programs like the new 2021-2022 Driving Road Safety Forward: Video Data Privacy task, and start spreading the word about new opportunities -- such as the open search for our next West Hub Executive Director!
In addition to the announcements and activities below, we welcome new connections. If you are interested in having your data science project, program, resource, or opportunity featured in a future West Hub newsletter, please email us at info@westbigdatahub.org. Community Spotlights: Connecting research, education, and practice From our colleagues in Alaska focused on data-driven environmental systems, to West Hub regional Spoke program updates from CoMSES.Net, to Research Experience for High School students writing about Oregon watershed-scale findings, read more about emerging research and Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) efforts highlighted in this summer's news articles. New to the West Hub? Browse our 2020-2025 Strategic Plan, a 'living document' that outlines our vision, mission, strategic goals, and more. National Workshop on Data Science Education: Videos and materials now online
Last month, more than 400 data science instructors met virtually for the fourth annual National Workshop on Data Science Education. Organized by UC Berkeley's Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society with support from Microsoft and the West Big Data Innovation Hub, the workshop featured a full week of live discussion panels, community lightning talks, and 'Ask Me Anything' open office hours. West Hub Co-PIs Sarah Stone and Meredith Lee participated in the National Efforts live panel along with Micaela Parker (Academic Data Science Alliance), Talitha Washington (Atlanta University Center Consortium), and Belle Wei (San Jose State University). Materials and video recordings are now online,with articles highlighting themes such as Bringing Data Science to High Schools, synergistic with the West Hub Let's Make It Count initiative. HSI STEM Hub Partnership: Workshop draws 8 states and Puerto Rico
Also in June, the University of Washington eScience Institute in collaboration with the West Hub and the HSI STEM Hub hosted an online workshop on Data Science Training and Collaboration. The workshop drew primarily faculty participants representing 12 universities and colleges across 8 states and Puerto Rico, covering topics such as data science curriculum and tools, The Carpentries, data science for social good, and cloud computing. This workshop was part of a series of workshops offered by the HSI STEM Hub throughout the spring/summer of 2021 and represents an ongoing collaboration with the West Hub.
Afternoon of FAIR Data: Videos and slides online
In partnership with GO FAIR US and EarthCube, the West Hub hosted a webinar on FAIR Workflows and the CARE Principles, including:
FAIR in Workflows where Carole Goble and Frederik Coppens discussed steps towards FAIR principles for computational tools and workflows, demonstrating workflowhub.eu. Denis Yuen and Beth Sheets discussed how Dockstore, a computational tool and workflow sharing site, attempts to help researchers increase the portability and reproducibility of their work. The video and slides are now online.
Be FAIR and CARE — The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance: Dr. Lydia Jennings from the University of Arizona discussed the relationship between CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance and FAIR Principles. View the video and abstract online.
Driving Road Safety Forward: Video Data Privacy Task, featured in benchmarking initiative, now open
Building upon the National Transportation Data Challenge hosted by the network of Big Data Innovation Hubs, this collaboration with the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration and Oak Ridge National Laboratory aims to advance the state-of-the-art in video de-identification, encouraging participants from all sectors to develop and demonstrate techniques with the provided data. Successful methods balancing driver privacy with fidelity of relevant information have the potential to not only broaden researcher access to existing data, but also inform the trajectory of transportation safety research, policy, and education initiatives. In addition to being hosted on the West Hub's submittable platform, the Task is featured in the 2021 MediaEval Multimedia Evaluation benchmarking initiative, which generates dozens of research papers each year. Register now to access data from the GitHub repository and receive announcements about Jupyter Notebook tutorials, team formation, and seed funding opportunities. Program to Empower Partnerships with Industry and Government: Applications now open
The Program to Empower Partnerships with Industry and Government (PEPI-G) supports data faculty members, research scientists, postdocs, and graduate and undergraduate students from across the country in working on high level problems for the federal government. The 2022 partner, the Department of Homeland Security, is seeking applicants in cybersecurity areas including general cybersecurity, cyber threat detection, cyber security analytics, next generation cybersecurity, and cybersecurity artificial intelligence / machine learning. Fellowships will span 4-12 months, beginning in early 2022. Apply now, and stay tuned for more announcements about workshop and pilot research opportunities. Data Matters: Short-course series August 9-13
Data Matters is a week-long series over August 9-13, 2021 comprised of one- and two-day courses aimed at students and professionals in business, research, and government. Sponsored by the Odum Institute for Research and Social Science at UNC-Chapel Hill, the National Consortium for Data Science, RENCI and Northern Carolina State University, the short-course series gives students the chance to learn about a wide range of topics in data science, analytics, visualization, curation and more from expert instructors. Learn more here. Last Call for Registration: Research Running on Cloud Compute & Emerging Technologies, RRoCCET21, August 10-12
Sign up now for RRoCCET21, a new virtual conference organized by CloudBank in association with the University of Washington, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, and the West Big Data Innovation Hub. Explore the benefits unlocked by migrating research to the public cloud, and learn about successful case studies in areas like neuroscience, wildfire modeling, public transit, genome analysis, mental health support and more. Register here. COVID Info Commons: Research Lightning Talks, Q&A August 18
The next COVID Info Commons (CIC) webinar August 18 includes Deborah Salon (Arizona State University): Investigating Attitudinal and Behavioral Changes in US Households Before, During, and After the COVID-19 Pandemic; Massood Tabib-Azar (University of Utah): Colorimetric COVID-19 Detection Using Aptamers; and COVID Information Commons Undergraduate Student Paper Challenge 2nd Place Winner Samson Qian (University of California, San Diego): Generating Explanations for Chest Medical Scan Pneumonia Predictions. If you are interested in presenting NSF or NIH funded COVID research at a future CIC webinar, please email info@covidinfocommons.net. NCEAS Environmental Data Science Summit
February 8-9, 2022 as part of a new Environmental Data Science Research Coordination Network, this inaugural annual summit will take place in Santa Barbara, California. This year’s theme is “Harnessing Diversity in Environmental Data Science” and will bring together environmental data scientists to connect, learn, share, and collaborate. Participants will be selected through an application process with multiple opportunities for participant funding; details here. If you are interested in having your data science project, program, resource, or opportunity featured in a future West Hub newsletter, please email us at info@westbigdatahub.org.
Job Opportunity
Executive Director, West Big Data Innovation Hub
The Executive Director of the West Big Data Innovation Hub (West Hub) provides senior management and leadership of a multi-institution and multidisciplinary research effort. UC Berkeley serves as the home for the West Hub, one of a network of four regional efforts seeded by the National Science Foundation. Along with partner institutions, the University of Washington eScience Institute and the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego, UC Berkeley serves as the central organizational point for the West Hub, which brings together academia, industry, government, and non-profit organizations from across a 13 state region. We encourage all to learn more about this opportunity as well as additional openings at data.berkeley.edu/about/job-opportunities.
