The Texas A&M Institute of Data Science (TAMIDS) has announced seven awardees under its Career Initiation Fellow Program. The program was designed to provide early career support to faculty working in any area involving Data Science and to encourage them to propose engagements with TAMIDS activities, programs, or broader mission, to be undertaken during the year of the award. Each Fellow received a $10,000 research bursary, and TAMIDS Director Dr. Nick Duffield will work with them to promote their activities within TAMIDS programs.
The 2022 Texas A&M Institute of Data Science Career Initiation Fellows work in varied disciplines of foundational and applied Data Science across the University, with TAMIDS engagements involving workshops, and short courses. Many congratulations to the 2022 Fellows!
- Abhishek Chakrabortty is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics, College of Science. His research broadly focuses on statistical learning in semi-supervised settings, high dimensional inference, and causal inference & missing data, with applications in the analysis of large and complex datasets that arise frequently in the modern “big data” era. He plans to develop a short lecture series on modern topics in statistical learning theory, including semi-supervised inference and causal inference, and their applications.
- Irfan Khan works in the applications of Artificial Intelligence in various domains, including, but not limited to cybersecurity, cyber-physical systems, biomedical, and marine systems. He will arrange a workshop on the “Importance of Data Science in Maritime Cybersecurity” through TAMIDS Data Science Career Initiation Fellowship award.
- Stephanie Paal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering. Dr. Paal’s research interests are focused on hybrid AI-physics based approaches to address the emerging and growing challenges in natural hazards engineering. Dr. Paal will engage with the TAMIDS BYOD workshops to accelerate involvement of AI-interested faculty and graduate students in semester-long research projects in her graduate course.
- Jian Tao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Visualization, College of Architecture. Dr. Tao’s research interests include data analytics and visualization, numerical algorithms, high performance computing, computational science and engineering, and machine learning. He is also the Assistant Director for Project Development at TAMIDS where he will continue his engagement in various educational and research programs at TAMIDS with a focus on the development of key technologies to speed up the creation and deployment of digital twins for scientific and engineering applications.
- Rui Tuo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, College of Engineering. Dr. Tuo’s research interest lies the design and analysis of computer experiments, uncertainty quantification, and machine learning methodologies and algorithms with the kernel and Gaussian process techniques. Dr. Tuo delivered a TAMIDS tutorial on “Gaussian Processes and Bayesian Optimization” and is one of the organizers of the TAMIDS workshop “Uncertainty Quantification: Theory Meets Practice”.
- Nate Veldt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. His research focuses on algorithms and optimization for network analysis and data science. Dr. Veldt will lead an interdisciplinary workshop on mathematical and computational foundations of data science.
- Shuang Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Oceanography, where his research focuses on integrating numerical modeling and data science to advance our understanding of global carbon cycle, its role in driving the environmental change through Earth’s history, and its impact on the ongoing climate change. Dr. Zhang plans to develop a workshop on applied data science in global carbon cycle research.