The 2021 round of PODS funding strongly encourages works that transform research domains through data science and AI, works that improve the reproducibility of research, and works that promise major impact and potential for significant expansion. 17 teams receive funding support for a wide range of exciting projects with data science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the common thread. Researchers on these projects are from 9 schools and colleges on the Ann Arbor campus and from the Flint campus.

Propelling Original Data Science
MIDAS offers the Propelling Original Data Science (PODS) grants annually. This funding is for projects lead by U-M faculty.

Awarded Projects

Below are the projects that were awarded PODS grants, listed with their (co) Principal Investigators.

  • Images to Integrated Data: Piloting new methods to digitize, parse, and link historical records, J. Trent Alexander (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research), Sara Lafia (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research)
  • Detecting Early-Warning Signals of Market Share Loss from Locus of Customer MovementsSyagnik Banerjee (Marketing), Halil Bisgin (Computer Science), Murali Mani (Computer Science), U-M Flint
  • Coordinated Multi-building Modeling and Management for Flexible Grid Service InnovationEunshin Byon (Industrial and Operations Engineering), Raed Al Kontar (Industrial and Operations Engineering)
  • Exploring Attention-based Deep Learning Methods for Improving Students’ Ability to Engage with Scientific LiteratureKevyn Collins-Thompson (School of Information), Yulia Sevryugina (U-M Library)
  • Robust Machine Learning under Distribution Shifts and Shocks: Application to Sustainable Air QualityParamveer Dhillon (School of Information)
  • IPODS: Innovative and Powerful Optimization Methods for Data Science with Statistical GuaranteesSalar Fattahi (Industrial and Operations Engineering), Albert Berahas (Industrial and Operations Engineering)
  • Supporting Decision-making for a Vital Waterway in the Great Lakes by Machine Learning Model-based Lake Ice ForecastingAyumi Fujisaki-Manome (Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research), Christiane Jablonowski (Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering)
  • Interpretable Machine Learning for Identifying Descriptors of Catalysts for Chemical ConversionBryan Goldsmith (Chemical Engineering), Suljo Linic (Chemical Engineering)
  • Ensuring FAIRness in Social Media ArchivesLibby Hemphill (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research)
  • Measuring Racial Disparity in the Language of Physician-Patient InteractionsDavid Jurgens (School of Information), Allison Earl (Psychology)
  • Equitable Models for Persistent Opioid Use Prediction and PersonalizationRahul Ladhania (Health Management and Policy), Anne Fernandez (Psychiatry)
  • Discovering Causes of Cancer Recurrence Through Inverse Reinforcement LearningGary Luker (Radiology), Jennifer Linderman (Chemical Engineering), Kathryn Luker (Radiology)
  • Using Geospatial Data Science to Identify Vulnerable Communities to Climate ChangeJoshua Newell (School for Environment and Sustainability), Marie O’Neill (Environmental Health Sciences), Carina Gronlund (Survey Research Center)
  • Machine Learning Augmented System for Continuous Fetal MonitoringKathleen Sienko (Mechanical Engineering), Carrie Bell (Obstetrics and Gynecology), Noel Perkins (Mechanical Engineering)
  • Classifying the Content of Undergraduate Course-taking at ScaleKevin Stange (Public Policy), Allyson Flaster (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research)
  • Data Science Approach towards a Socio-ecological Framework for the Investigation of Continental Urban Stream Water Quality PatternRunzi Wang (School for Environment and Sustainability), Yang Chen (Statistics), William S. Currie (School for Environment and Sustainability)
  • Scientifically-Structured Latent Variable Methods for High-Dimensional Data to Individualize HealthcareZhenke Wu (Biostatistics)