STEM Workforce Development
Workforce Development: Graduate Data Science Workshop & Community Building
Effective Years: 2015-2017
The University of Washington will host a national workshop where graduate students in data science disciplines will interact to explore data science grand challenges in a collaborative environment. The project will implement a novel idea and advance the understanding of how to develop data science communities by engaging graduate students, academia, and industry. It also addresses an important national need for researchers with cross-disciplinary training in data science and serves as a catalyst for other institutions to integrate data science skills more broadly throughout the curriculum.
The goal of the project is to help create a highly connected workforce that is adept at cross-disciplinary communication and idea synthesis, primed to solve a new generation of data science and big data challenges. To accomplish this goal, the investigators will conduct a 2.5-day workshop for approximately 100 attendees that is designed to (1) introduce graduate students to new data science concepts and applications, (2) enable students to interact with experts from industry, domain, and methodology fields, and (3) initiate the establishment of a professional community using team building activities. The investigators will conduct a pre-workshop promotional campaign and develop a web site where users can connect and share their ideas. Following the workshop, a set of white papers, team reports, and a workshop report will be available to the public.
