Welcome to the South Group

The South region has submitted its proposal to establish a big data innovation hub. The map to the left showcases the locations of all the South BD Hub partners. The project summary, submitted to NSF, is listed below.

BD Hubs: Collaborative Proposal: SOUTH: A Big Data Innovation Hub for the South Region

Srinivas Aluru, PI, Georgia Institute of Technology (aluru@cc.gatech.edu)

Ashok Krishnamurthy, PI, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (ashok@renci.org)

Overview: Big Data (BD) is a prominent, rapidly emerging, and broadly applicable discipline with far-reaching scientific and economic potential, thanks to sustained federal and private investments and widespread interest among researchers and practitioners. While significant BD research has already taken place, there is a gap in its translation into economic growth and end-user impact. BD often arises in the practice of industry and government, and in broad geographic settings, making multi-stakeholder partnerships vital to realizing its full potential.

To successfully address these challenges, academic institutions from the 16 South States and the District of Columbia, in partnership with a wide swath of collaborators from industry, government, and non-profit organizations, propose to establish the South Big Data Regional Innovation Hub (South BD Hub) with Georgia Institute of Technology (GT) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) serving as lead institutions. The team will collectively establish a community-driven Organization and Governance model, with a Steering Council composed of stakeholders chosen to reflect breadth by expertise, contributions, organizational type, geography, diversity, and other considerations. The Hub will establish several public-private partnerships to purse regional priority areas (spokes) including healthcare and health disparities, coastal hazards, industrial big data, materials and manufacturing, and habitat planning. The Hub will also launch cross-cutting spoke projects in BD Sharing and Infrastructure, and BD Economics, Privacy, and Policy Issues.

The South BD Hub will have dual locations in Atlanta and Research Triangle Park, with co-Executive Directors broadly accountable to the South BD Hub partners. GT and UNC-CH commit to hosting, nurturing, and ensuring long-term vitality of the Hub through financial, intellectual, physical, and cyber-infrastructure investments. Partner organizations are prepared to make diverse contributions, including to BD spoke projects.

Intellectual Merit : The project will lead to the establishment of a successful governance structure and operational plan for BD-driven community collaboration in the South region. It will advance several regional/national priorities and engender economic and societal benefits in: 1) Healthcare: including precision medicine, health analytics, and disparities in health status, access, and outcomes; 2) Coastal Hazards: understanding and mitigating the widespread consequences of natural and man-made disasters; 3) Industrial Big Data: including cyber-physical systems, BD driven management of physical infrastructure, and power generation, transmission, and distribution from a variety of sources; 4) Materials and Manufacturing: including BD driven contributions to the materials genome initiative and bridging the gap between materials science and manufacturing practice; and 5) Habitat Planning: including urban infrastructure, smart cities, transportation, rural-urban infrastructure, and wildlife habitat and conservation planning.

Broader Impacts : The South BD Hub will serve as the primary vehicle for interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder partnerships to pursue BD projects of interest to the South region and the nation. In this capacity, the Hub will serve academia, non-profit organizations, for-profit businesses, and government organizations. The host institutions are prepared to act as pillars for Hub operations, and sustain it for the long-term. The Hub will contribute to meeting the national need for data scientists through training programs, workshops, MOOCs, online resources, and other workforce development activities. It will partner with other regional hubs to collectively nurture a BD innovation ecosystem and serve as a national asset.