L to R: Rebecca Willett, Rina Foygel Barber, Mary Silber.
L to R: Rebecca Willett, Rina Foygel Barber, Mary Silber.

The flourishing discipline of data science extracts new discoveries and knowledge from the rapidly growing pools of data available in science, industry, and society. To do so, data science combines expertise from computer science, statistics, and mathematics, finding new approaches and best practices for working with massive, complex, and continuously changing datasets.

The Transdisciplinary Research In Principles Of Data Science (TRIPODS) program of the National Science Foundation supports this work by bridging these three disciplines for research and training. In its first round of Phase II funding, the TRIPODS program awarded $12.5 million to the Institute for Foundations of Data Science (IFDS), a four-university collaboration among the Universities of Washington, Wisconsin-Madison, California Santa Cruz, and Chicago.

IFDS research on complex data sets will “lead to improved accuracy and decreased bias in algorithmic decision making processes, as well as methods to cope with ever-changing data that may be corrupted by noise or even malicious intent,” the NSF said in an announcement. Its work helps establish the maturing field of data science while also advancing machine learning and other artificial intelligence approaches.

University of Chicago faculty involved with the institute include Rebecca Willett, Professor of Computer Science and Statistics, Rina Foygel Barber, Professor of Statistics, and Mary Silber, Director of the Committee on Computational and Applied Mathematics (CCAM) and Professor of Statistics.

Willett was one of the founding principal investigators of IFDS when it was originally funded by the NSF in 2017 as part of the TRIPODS Phase I program. For the first three years, she credits the group with connecting scientists, disciplines, and students to research critical topics such as complexity, robustness, and ethics in data science.

“This remarkable program incorporates statistics, theoretical computer science, and mathematics into data science and machine learning in a principled way,” Willett said. “Building robustness to corrupted data, understanding how much data is necessary for various machine learning systems to perform reliably, quantifying our confidence in predictions based on data, and ensuring that data-centric algorithms achieve ethical standards are all facilitated by this institute via cross-disciplinary joint efforts.”

In addition to supporting research, IFDS activities also help train the next generation of data scientists through workshops, summer schools for high school students, and research assistant programs. The expanded role of UChicago in the second phase of the institute will provide students across computer science, statistics, and mathematics with new opportunities to participate in these programs and work with leading researchers at the partner institutions.

For more coverage of the TRIPODS Phase II funding, see announcements from the NSF and the University of Washington, and the University of Wisconsin. A second data science institute, the Foundations of Data Science Institute, was also funded as part of the $25 million in NSF awards.

Related News

More UChicago CS stories from this research area.
Card Image 62caee0
Card Image
UChicago CS News

UChicago Undergrad Analyzes Machine Learning Models Used By CPD, Uncovers Lack of Transparency About Data Usage

Card Image 7344b6c
Card Image
UChicago CS News

Five UChicago CS students named to Siebel Scholars Class of 2024

In the News

In The News: U.N. Officials Urge Regulation of Artificial Intelligence

"Security Council members said they feared that a new technology might prove a major threat to world peace."
Card Image 67eeb18
Card Image
UChicago CS News

UChicago Computer Scientists Bring in Generative Neural Networks to Stop Real-Time Video From Lagging

Card Image c82ead9
Card Image
UChicago CS News

UChicago Team Wins The NIH Long COVID Computational Challenge

Card Image 1d44525
Card Image
UChicago CS News

UChicago Assistant Professor Raul Castro Fernandez Receives 2023 ACM SIGMOD Test-of-Time Award

Card Image 7811a19
Card Image
UChicago CS News

Mike Franklin, Dan Nicolae Receive 2023 Arthur L. Kelly Faculty Prize

Card Image ab13c24
Card Image
UChicago CS News

PhD Student Kevin Bryson Receives NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to Create Equitable Algorithmic Data Tools

Card Image 0773bb6
Card Image
UChicago CS News

Computer Science Displays Catch Attention at MSI’s Annual Robot Block Party

Card Image 769718e
Card Image
UChicago CS News

UChicago / School of the Art Institute Class Uses Art to Highlight Data Privacy Dangers

Card Image 368381b
Card Image
UChicago CS News

UChicago, Stanford Researchers Explore How Robots and Computers Can Help Strangers Have Meaningful In-Person Conversations

Card Image 9046991
Card Image
UChicago CS News

UChicago Undergrad Team Places Second Overall In Regionals For World’s Largest Programming Competition

arrow-down-largearrow-left-largearrow-right-large-greyarrow-right-large-yellowarrow-right-largearrow-right-smallbutton-arrowclosedocumentfacebookfacet-arrow-down-whitefacet-arrow-downPage 1CheckedCheckedicon-apple-t5backgroundLayer 1icon-google-t5icon-office365-t5icon-outlook-t5backgroundLayer 1icon-outlookcom-t5backgroundLayer 1icon-yahoo-t5backgroundLayer 1internal-yellowinternalintranetlinkedinlinkoutpauseplaypresentationsearch-bluesearchshareslider-arrow-nextslider-arrow-prevtwittervideoyoutube