$1.5M federal grant creates Midwest big data hub
BUSINESS RECORD STAFF Nov 3, 2015 | 4:38 pm
2 min read time
427 wordsAll Latest News, Education, Innovation and EntrepreneurshipIowa State University is one of five universities creating a Midwest big data hub with the support of a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
The Midwest hub, which will be known as SEEDCorn (Sustainable Enabling Environment for Data Collaboration), is one of four regional big data hubs announced Monday by the National Science Foundation. With Iowa State, the founding schools of SEEDCorn are the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Michigan, Indiana University and the University of North Dakota.
The hub will be led by Edward Seidel of Illinois, where he directs the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and is the Founder professor in physics and a professor of astronomy. As the full-time executive director, he will be based in Illinois. Part-time staff will be based at the other campuses.
The hub will be dedicated to meeting the challenges of collecting, managing, mining, storing and analyzing the huge and complex data sets created by today’s research, government and commercial activities, ISU said in a release. A project description said the SEEDCorn project will work “to harness the power and realize the promise of Big Data.”
Sarah Nusser, Iowa State’s vice president for research, is a co-principal investigator for the Midwest big data hub and a member of its steering committee.
“This is an excellent opportunity for Iowa State to build on its data-driven science initiative,” Nusser said. “President Steven Leath has already invested in 20 new big data faculty positions and will soon announce research projects supported by the Presidential Initiative for Interdisciplinary Research for Data Driven Science. We have many strengths to contribute to the Midwest big data hub.”
A key strategy for harnessing big data will be to establish partnerships between universities, businesses, government agencies and nonprofits, Nusser said. Those partnerships are expected to help the Midwest respond to big data challenges while capturing opportunities and resources for the region.
Nusser, for example, noted the hub will have research themes (dubbed spokes) that are closely related to Iowa’s economy and Iowa State’s strengths, including digital agriculture, advanced manufacturing, smart cities, transportation and a spoke related to the water-food-energy nexus.
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