Director’s Message

The Data Science Research Center (“DSRC”) aims to impact the broad communities of science, engineering, medicine, policy and business by (1) inventing transformative algorithms, tools and methodologies for data analytics, and (2) training young talents with interdisciplinary skills to work on data analysis in a variety of broader domains. Its critical mission is to transform massive raw data to valuable information and merit by statistical learning and knowledge extraction.

DSRC involves faculty, staff and students to work towards this ambitious goal, thereby serving as an important vehicle for both academic research and student education/training at DKU. The interdisciplinary nature of DSRC matches the strategic vision set by DKU for future development.

The director oversees all activities at DSRC. So far, DSRC has thirty-two full-time faculty members, and two full-time staff members provide administrative support for all faculty, staff and students affiliated with the center. Any faculty member or student can join DSRC, if he/she has an active research project hosted by the center. DSRC is mostly funded by external research projects. These external research funds are used to recruit research staff members and student interns working on individual projects.

The major accomplishments in 2023 include:

• Published 51 journal papers and 55 conference papers.
• Filed 7 patent applications, offered 41 invited presentations, and received 6 major awards.
• Jointly hosted 2 workshops: Joint Workshop on Math and Data Science, and Joint Workshop on Electric Information and Data Science.
• Hosted 9 technical seminars with 368 attendees in total.
• Supported 20 junior faculty members (i.e., assistant and associate professors) by offering internal research funds, bridging external sponsors/collaborators and mentoring career development.
• Initiated 5 Data+X research projects for undergraduate students, involving 7 faculty members and 9 undergraduate students.