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Data Science @ Carolina | March 31, 2022

 

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Each month we share a list of news, events, and opportunities for the data science community at UNC. Click the links below or scroll down to read more.

If you are interested in submitting items from your department to feature in this section, please contact Jayasree Jaganatha for more information. | 

Announcements:

    Carolina Data Science Now returns in May

    The Carolina Data Science Now team is immensely grateful for the positive response we have seen from the UNC data science community so far. We are excited to continue creating an environment where researchers and practitioners can connect across domain boundaries.

    We are pleased to share that the seminar series will be returning on May 26. The theme of the event will be announced in the coming weeks. If you are interested in presenting your work at a future event, please share your project by using our online form.

    In the meantime, we encourage you to explore our website to review blogs and videos from past events, as well as to review the data science news and events from around Carolina in the following sections.

     

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    Graduate Certificate in Computational Linguistics

    The Department of Linguistics is now accepting applications for the Graduate Certificate program in Computational Linguistics jointly administered by the Department of Computer Science and the School of Information and Library Science. This program provides students who wish to work in the areas of machine translation, machine learning, speech-to-text software, natural language processing, natural language generation, and artificial intelligence with an understanding of human language structure and the skills of linguistic analysis as well as the computational tools to develop software applications to parse and generate human language. Applications are due on April 1. Learn more on their website.

     

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    Women in Data Science (WiDS) Research Triangle @ IBM Regional Conference

    WiDS Research Triangle @ IBM is an independent event that is organized by IBM Research Triangle Park to coincide with the annual WiDS Worldwide conference organized by Stanford University and an estimated 200+ locations worldwide. All genders are invited to attend WiDS regional events which feature outstanding women doing outstanding work. The event will take place on April 1. Learn more on their website.

     

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    How To Be An Antiracist Researcher

    Antiracist researchers combat inequality and racism by conceptualizing, implementing, and disseminating research that dismantles racism, oppression, discrimination, and structural inequalities. This presentation offers participants an opportunity to learn how to engage in antiracist research by presenting a counter-narrative to the traditional conceptualization and implementation of research with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). During our time together, the panelists will define antiracist research, offer unique principles for conducting antiracist research, present challenges the antiracist researcher will encounter, and offer practical recommendations Learn more on their website.

     

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    Neural networks as cognitive models of syntax — Prof. Tal Linzen

    [UPDATE] This event will be a zoom-only event. To attend, please use this link to join the zoom session.

    Speakers of a language generalize their knowledge of syntax in a systematic way to constructions they have never encountered before. This observation has motivated the influential position in linguistics that humans are innately endowed with syntax-specific inductive biases. The applied success of deep learning systems that are not designed with such biases invites a reconsideration of this position. On April 8 at 12 PM, Prof. Tal Linzen, Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Data Science at NYU, will review work that uses paradigms from psycholinguistics to examine the syntactic generalization capabilities of contemporary neural network architectures.
    Alongside some successes, this work suggests that human-like generalization requires stronger inductive biases than those expressed in standard neural network architectures. Click here to join the zoom session.

     

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    Blyth Lecture Series — Dr. Christina Mack

    During this year’s annual Carl Blyth Lecture, Dr. Christina Mack will be speaking on the use of Data Science in sports to protect athletes during the pandemic. Dr. Mack is an alumnus from UNC Public Health and currently serves as vice president of epidemiology and clinical evidence at IQVIA. She will reporting on much of the work she and her colleagues have done to guide the efforts of the NFL and NBA over the course of the pandemic. The UNC Department of Exercise and Sport Science will be hosting in a hybrid format with the in-person portion in the Genome Science Building (Room G100) and streaming via Zoom. Learn more on their website.

     

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    Call for Proposals — On the Books: Jim Crow and Algorithms of Resistance

    The On the Books project team invites proposals from instructors at UNC-Chapel Hill to become teaching fellows. Three teaching fellows will receive $2,000 each to create an education module using products from On the Books and teach the module in a course during the 2022-2023 academic year. Applications for teaching fellows close on April 15, and proposals for research fellows will open on April 1. Learn more on their website.

     

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    Amazon Web Services (AWS) Immersion Training Event

    The Eshelman Institute for Innovation will host an AWS training event from May 10 – 12. Attendees will learn about setting up capabilities such as storage, networking, security, and more during sessions. There are 40 slots available for UNC faculty and staff. For more information, please contact Bob Dieterle.

     

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    Data Matters short-course series returns in August 2022

    Data Matters™ is a week-long series of one and two-day courses aimed at students and professionals in business, research, and government. The short course series is sponsored by the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science, the National Consortium for Data Science, and RENCI. The series gives students the chance to learn about a wide range of topics in data science, analytics, visualization, curation, and more from expert instructors. Registration is now open; reserve your spot now! Learn more on their website.

     

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    Biomedical Data Translator Platform moves to the next phase

    Although we now have huge amounts of data on everything from genes to the causes of disease, it is stored in an enormous variety of ways and in many different locations. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to find and use this data to think about biomedical questions in a big picture, holistic way. The NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) Biomedical Data Translator program is working to change this by funding a platform that allows scientists to easily access and interrelate data to inform new research directions. RENCI investigators are part of the leadership for three of the 15 teams that make up the Biomedical Data Translator consortium. Learn more on their website.

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