Support for High-Impact Research
Data science and AI methodologies are transforming many research fields, blurring disciplinary boundaries and driving scientific discoveries through new perspectives. MIDAS affiliate faculty researchers are using cutting-edge methodologies for a variety of “endpoints” – significant scientific and societal challenges. MIDAS helps them develop new ideas and interdisciplinary teams through research incubation activities, pilot funding and dataset access. The examples below exhibit our faculty members’ creative and impactful research toward three “endpoints”
- Dr. Nancy Fleischer (Epidemiology), Dr. Karandeep Singh (Learning Health Sciences) and other MIDAS faculty members use public health survey data and medical record data to uncover inequity in COVID patients’ experiences, the care they receive, and long-term impacts.
- Dr. Rahul Ladhania (Health Management and Policy) and colleagues are improving Machine Learning methods to better predict persistent opioid use for all race and gender groups
- Dr. David Jurgens (School of Information) and colleagues use advanced Natural Language Processing methods to improve racial equity in doctor-patient interactions.
- Dr. Jon Zelner (Epidemiology) uses geospatial data to provide guidance to the State of Michigan on the unequal infection risks of different racial groups.
- Dr. Neil Carter (Environment and Sustainability) and colleagues combine many types of data and use probabilistic modeling to figure out how illicit wildlife trade networks operate
- Dr. Paramveer Dhillon (School of Information) and colleagues use Graph Neural Networks to analyze environmental sensor data to predict air quality during natural disasters.
- Dr. Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome (Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering) and colleagues develop machine learning models for ice forecasting to support the Great Lakes shipping community.
- Dr. Joshua Newell (Environment and Sustainability) and colleagues use geospatial data and social media data and Deep Learning to identify communities that are vulnerable to flooding and heat, and plot climate change vulnerability maps for the State of Michigan.
- Dr. Libby Hemphill (School of Information) and colleagues analyze social media data to identify extremist groups.
- Dr. Rada Mihalcea (Computer Science and Engineering) and colleagues develop AI algorithms based on linguistic analysis of media and online data to automatically detect fake news.
- Dr. Sarita Schoenebeck (School of Information) and colleagues analyze large volumes of social media data and design large-scale public experiments to reduce harassment and the spread of misinformation online.
- Dr. Michael Traugott (Center for Political Studies) and colleagues analyze media reports and social media data to determine the political sentiments of the public during major political campaigns.
Helping Researchers Secure Major External Grants Through Pilot Funding
The 2021 round of Propelling Original Data Science pilot grant program supports 17 research projects, involving 36 (co-) Principal Investigators from 7 schools / colleges at Ann Arbor and Flint. Since 2015, MIDAS research funding has enabled a total of 52 research projects, and the project teams have gone on to secure more than $100,000,000 in funding from external grants.
Developing Thematic Research Areas
Machine Learning in Drug Discovery
Through the NSF’s Industry–University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRC) program, MIDAS Associate Director Dr. Kayvan Najarian is leading the effort to develop the Center for Data-Driven Drug Development and Treatment Assessment (DATA). It brings together data scientists, mathematicians, biomedical researchers, and healthcare providers to produce reproducible methodologies that will make a broad impact on drug discovery and biomedical applications of data science. By forming collaborations with industry, government, and community partners, the project will enable the dissemination and translation of research into impactful products and services for the betterment of society. DATA will also build a world-class data science community that is inclusive and promotes diversity at all stages of the academic pipeline.
Training
Michigan Data Science Fellows
This postdoc program at MIDAS provides outstanding young researchers with intensive data science and AI experience as they ready themselves for independent research and faculty positions. Upon completing the program, our first cohort of Fellows have gone on to faculty positions at Penn State, Carnegie Melon, the University of Texas-Austin, and right here at Michigan, as well as careers at Ford Motor Company and General Motors.
Teaching Data Science to Faculty Researchers
The Introduction to Data Science for Biomedical Researchers Bootcamp is the first bootcamp that MIDAS offers to help researchers adopt data science methods. The intensive training started the participants on the journey to learn machine learning and its clinical applications, incorporate data science methods in their research programs and grant proposals. Following the success of this event, MIDAS is now developing similar bootcamps for researchers in other domains.