NSF Doubles Down on Data Science

The National Science Foundation has awarded two grants to the University of California at Berkeley, the first to deepen the theoretical foundations of data science, the second addressing the big data skills gap. The f Read more…

Big Bird Data Project Probes Migrations

On a quiet spring or fall evening, high above, you may have heard the honking of migrating Canada Geese somehow flying in formation either due north or south. To determine just how our feathered friends accomplish these Read more…

NSF Funds New Cognitive Science Research

As part of its BRAIN initiative, the National Science Foundation announced a second series of grants this week awarded to multidisciplinary teams to further explore cognitive and neural systems, including "data-intensive Read more…

U.S. Smart Cities Effort Targets Data Apps

The Obama administration this week said it would invest more than $160 million in a U.S. "smart cities" initiative by, among other steps, "harnessing the growing data revolution [and] low-cost sensors." Along with har Read more…

NIH Effort Looks to Compress Big Genomics Data

The steady progress being made in "precision," or genomic medicine is bringing with it a growing need to get a better handle on soaring data volumes. For example, a single human genome sequence constitutes a roughly 140- Read more…

NSF Awards $31M in Big Data Research Grants

Backing up Obama administration rhetoric about the economic impact of big data, the National Science Foundation will fund 17 data science research programs totaling $31 million as part of its Data Infrastructure Building Read more…

Bringing Dark Data to Light

One of the chief challenges of big data, especially where established science and research is concerned, is bringing what is called “dark data” – the data that is hidden in tables and texts of the massive stores of scientific journals – to light. A research team is working on this problem combining several research areas into a potentially powerful tool. Read more…

SSDs and the New Scientific Revolution

SSDs are anything but a flash in the pan for big science. With news of the world’s most powerful data-intensive systems leveraging the storage technology, including the new Gordon supercomputer, and other new “big data” research centers tapping into the wares... Read more…

Government Puts $200 Million Behind Big Data Initiative

This week the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the United States announced a massive injection of funding to create and support big data research and development efforts. The government says that the Big Data Initiative will work to support a number of agencies, including the Department of Defense.... Read more…

The Evolving Art (and Business) of Data Curation

The concept of data curation has significant traction in academic settings, especially recently with the $20 million NSF grant to Johns Hopkins to boost its data curation efforts. However, while the term hasn't caught on in the enterprise, the technologies for data curation exist already across a number of platforms. Read more…