College Joins UNC Charlotte Data Science Initiative

September 16, 2016
Categories: College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences, News, Research
data science researchers in a room discussing

The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences is now part of the UNC Charlotte Data Science Initiative, joining the College of Computing and Informatics, Belk College of Business, and the College of Health and Human Services as part of this strategic partnership.

With this agreement, Project Mosaic, a social sciences research initiative, will deepen its collaboration with the DSI, enhancing the ability of DSI to leverage existing strengths in computational social science research. The agreement will also facilitate partnership with the humanities and natural sciences that are part of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

Through projects like the Partnership for Social Good, the DSI has sought to foster cross-college, interdisciplinary ventures in areas relevant to UNC Charlotte and the community at large. Recently, the DSI put forth a campus-wide competition for seed grants in Social Good Analytics, and organized the Summit for Social Good on August 17, 2016 at UNC Charlotte Center City. This event, as an example of DSI work,  invited campus and community stakeholders to explore challenges to economic mobility, as well as to uncover the ways in which DSI can support computational social science research to identify barriers and solutions in the Charlotte region.

Jean-Claude Thill, Knight Foundation Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Director of Project Mosaic, has agreed to serve as the DSI Director for the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. In this role, Thill joins a larger leadership team composed of the following DSI College Directors:

  • Ashit Talukder, Bank of America Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Charlotte Visualization Lab, College of Computing and Informatics
  • Christopher Blanchette, Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences, College of Health and Human Services
  • Chandra Subramaniam, Associate Professor of Business Information Systems, Belk College of Business

The mission of Project Mosaic is to enhance social and behavioral science research at UNC Charlotte. Project Mosaic provides an intellectual collaborative community that connects social science researchers with a broader community of scholars. It also fosters the creation of interdisciplinary research teams in social and behavioral sciences.