Plan to attend the Midwest Big Date Hub Talk, which will be held on Monday, November 26 from 2:30–3:30 p.m. in Stuart Building, Room 106.

Midwest Big Data Hub Talk—”Partnering for the Big Data Innovation Ecosystem”

Abstract: The Big Data (BD) Regional Innovation Hubs were launched in 2015 by the National Science Foundation as part of its investment in the federal Big Data Research and Development Initiative. The BD Innovation Hubs and related investments are intended to accelerate and strengthen the data ecosystem, and it is the mission of the Midwest Big Data Hub (MBDH) to develop effective cross-sector networks ready to utilize data science and the data ecosystem to solve problems of regional and societal interest. The MBDH is a growing organization of public and private partners investing in data, tools, and infrastructure to improve access and use of shared and public data for scientific discovery and improved data-to-decision systems. Based at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the MBDH is a collaboration with Indiana University, Iowa State University, the University of Michigan, and the University of North Dakota, that supports training, education and workforce development, and facilitates access to data infrastructure, tools, and services for constituents across the region. The 12 states served by the MBDH are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Thematic areas of interest and funding include Digital Agriculture; Water Quality; Advanced Materials and Manufacturing; Smart, Connected, and Resilient Communities; Big Data and Biomedicine; and Data Science Education and Workforce Development. This talk will highlight current projects and evolving activities across developing industry-government-academic data partnerships.

Speaker Bio: Melissa Cragin is executive director of the Midwest Big Data Hub, and is based at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She is also a PI for the Open Storage Network collaborative project. Prior to joining NCSA, Cragin was staff associate in the Office of the Assistant Director, Directorate of Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF), after serving there as an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow. At NSF she guided development of data policy and accelerated community engagement on research data management and public access. Cragin also has an appointment as assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences at UIUC, where she previously led the Data Curation Education Program. She earned a Ph.D. from UIUC and an M.L.I.S. from Rutgers University.