Current Activities
Overview: As research on the environment, climate change and sustainability becomes a national priority, an increasing number of U-M environmental scientists are embracing data science and AI methods. MIDAS has been building collaboration and support for these researchers and our concerted effort lays the foundation for our next pillar.
MIDAS offers a summer academy for environmental scientists to help U-M faculty and research scientists adopt data science and AI techniques to environmental science research and integrate data science into their grant applications. The program also helps foster a U-M research community that will advance the application of data science and AI to research that encompasses environmental, climate, and earth sciences; as well as ecology. We also offer follow-up sessions that focus on developing data science components for grant proposals.
In addition, our Propelling Original Data Science (PODS) pilot funding program has been supporting a number of environmental research projects that use cutting-edge data science and AI methods, including:
- Improving the efficiency of energy grids
- Improving urban water quality
- Better machine learning models to monitor air quality
- Supporting decision making for navigating vital waterways in winter
- Identifying communities vulnerable to climate change
- Developing data systems of fish communities in the Great Lakes
- Detecting illicit wildlife trading
Who Will Benefit: All environmental scientists who want to explore data science and AI methods for their research, and methodologists who seek to collaborate with environmental scientists.
Coordinator: Beth Uberseder (Research Manager, MIDAS) and Ken Reid (Data Scientist, MIDAS)
Who Will Benefit: Researchers who want to learn the fundamentals of research with unstructured data, researchers who have such data and want to connect with methodology experts, and methodology experts who want to seek domain collaborators to significant research questions.
Coordinators: Beth Uberseder (Research Manager, MIDAS)