With the spring semester behind us, we’re reflecting on an exciting and eventful few months. TAMIDS hosted multiple events, workshops, seminars, and our annual highlight — the Student Data Challenge. We’re grateful to all the students who participated and to the faculty who helped make these outreach opportunities possible.
This year’s Student Data Challenge was a tremendous success. Each spring, TAMIDS organizes a seven-week themed data competition for undergraduate and graduate student teams to showcase their data analysis and visualization skills. This year’s theme focused on the intersection of data science and cybersecurity. We collaborated with the Cybersecurity Club and the Aggie Data Science Club to host mini-challenges and special events throughout the competition. At the final event, we awarded over $9,000 in prizes, recognizing excellence in categories such as Best Presentation Design, Best Supplementary Materials, and Best Use of Additional Data.
Our Seminar Series included seven invited speakers from a wide array of research areas who shared their work and how it relates to AI and data science. This semester, we covered topics from AI in healthcare and public safety in the construction industry to neural networks and geospatial data research. These presentations are a great way for students to be exposed to real-world applications of their education and to learn about potential career paths. We had over 100 students attend our Seminar Series and meet the experts behind the latest innovations in their fields.
The Data Science Student Ambassadors were also very active in their duties to increase data science education and literacy across campus. Students in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences hosted Career Talks, virtual presentations by former students who discussed their transition from an academic setting to holding industry positions and what skills were needed to make that transition. Our ambassadors also hosted a Machine Learning in Social Science Workshop with the help of the College of Education and Human Development. They introduced other PhD students to the fundamentals of machine learning and how they can apply different data analysis methods to their social science research. With each of these events and outreach opportunities, the TAMIDS Student Ambassadors are growing Texas A&M’s data science community.
Not only were our students working to engage with others, but our faculty also hosted multiple workshops, sharing the latest innovations and research in their fields. The Ethical and Explainable GeoAI Workshop brought together students, researchers, and policymakers to explore the development of AI-enhanced geosystems that are transparent, fair, and accountable. They discussed ethical challenges and societal implications of using AI in geospatial applications, emphasizing the need for equity, inclusivity, and transparency. The Scientific Machine LEarning Workshop was also a success, showcasing the work done by the Texas A&M community on scientific machine learning and forming new collaborations around topics like deep neural networks and large-scale simulations.
TAMIDS’s mission has always been to push boundaries and connect the STEM elements of data science to the humanities to promote collaboration and partnerships. By increasing data literacy and growing the Texas A&M data science community, we can inform wider social challenges and expand data science research and education on our campus and beyond.