Monthly Archives

June 2017

HV Jagadish contributes to Big Data magazine article on diversity

By | General Interest, News

HV Jagadish, a core MIDAS faculty member and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, contributed as a co-author on an article on diversity in big data that appears in to a special edition of Big Data magazine. Big Data is published by phys.org.

Jagadish co-authored the piece, titled “Diversity in Big Data, a Review,” with researchers from the University of Ioannia in Greece, and Drexel University. The article emphasizes the risks big data may pose to society and individuals if it fails to account for diversity and potential discrimination, and discusses connections between diversity and fairness in big data systems research.

Big Data in Transportation and Mobility symposium highlights diverse, emerging issues

By | Events, General Interest, News

MBDH-transThe Big Data in Transportation and Mobility symposium held June 22-23, 2017, in Ann Arbor, MI brought together more than 150 data science practitioners from academia, industry and government to explore emerging issues in this expanding field.

Sponsored by the NSF-supported Midwest Big Data Hub (MBDH) and the Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS), the symposium featured lightning talks from transportation research programs around the Midwest; tutorials and breakout sessions on specific issues and methods; a poster session; and a keynote address from two representatives of the Smart Columbus project: Chris Stewart, Ohio State University Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and Shoreh Elhami, GIS Manager for the city of Columbus.

Speakers and attendees came from a number of organizations from across the midwest including the University of Michigan, University of Illinois, University of Nebraska, University of North Dakota, North Dakota State University, Ohio State University, Purdue University, Denso International America, Fiat Chrysler, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, IAV Automotive Engineering and Yottabyte.  

“This was an extremely valuable opportunity to share information and ideas,” said Carol Flannagan, one of the organizers of the symposium and a researcher at MIDAS and the U-M Transportation Research Institute. “Cross-discipline and cross-institutional collaboration is crucial to the success of Big Data applications, and we took a significant step forward in that vein during this symposium.”

Topics addressed in talks, breakouts, and tutorials included:

  • New Analytic Tools for Designing and Managing Transportation Systems
  • New Mobility Options for Small and Mid-sized Cities in the Midwest
  • Automated and Connected Vehicles
  • Transforming Transportation Operations using High Performance Computing
  • On-Demand Transit
  • Using Big Data for Monitoring Bridges

At the closing session, participants outlined some areas that could be fruitful to focus on going forward, including increasing data-science literacy in the general public; diversity and workforce development in data science; public data-sharing platforms and partners; and privacy issues.

For a complete list of speakers and topics, please see the agenda. Videos of selected talks will be posted at midas.umich.edu in the coming days.

ARC-TS seeks input on next generation HPC cluster

By | Events, Flux, General Interest, Happenings, HPC, News

The University of Michigan is beginning the process of building our next generation HPC platform, “Big House.”  Flux, the shared HPC cluster, has reached the end of its useful life. Flux has served us well for more than five years, but as we move forward with replacement, we want to make sure we’re meeting the needs of the research community.

ARC-TS will be holding a series of town halls to take input from faculty and researchers on the next HPC platform to be built by the University.  These town halls are open to anyone and will be held at:

  • College of Engineering, Johnson Room, Tuesday, June 20th, 9:00a – 10:00a
  • NCRC Bldg 300, Room 376, Wednesday, June 21st, 11:00a – 12:00p
  • LSA #2001, Tuesday, June 27th, 10:00a – 11:00a
  • 3114 Med Sci I, Wednesday, June 28th, 2:00p – 3:00p

Your input will help to ensure that U-M is on course for providing HPC, so we hope you will make time to attend one of these sessions. If you cannot attend, please email hpc-support@umich.edu with any input you want to share.