Announcing the Spring 2023 Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS) Thematic Workshop Awards

The Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS) at the Georgia Institute of Technology has awarded grant funding for its 2023 Thematic Workshops in Cross-Discipline Data Science. Four awards were given to faculty and researchers that submitted proposals that demonstrated their activity would; target emerging areas in data science, afford opportunities in consolidating new and impactful research teams, and build networks that facilitate the pursuit of large funding opportunities.

The four winning teams, led by PIs from across Georgia Tech’s Colleges and Schools, will host their workshops during the Spring 2023 semester at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Atlanta campus.

Congratulations to the Workshop Grant Winners!

Integrative Genomics for Health Equity

This one-day workshop will address the computational and analytical limitations to the use of integrative genomics and multi-omic profiling to understand and promote health equity. As genomic analysis begins to transform healthcare delivery, by promoting personalized assessment of therapeutic intervention, it is becoming increasingly apparent that both social and genetic determinants of health need to be measured.  Equitable implementation of genomic medicine must evaluate the influences of ancestry as well as socioeconomic status alongside genetics, with effects mediated in part through gene expression and epigenetics.  This workshop will bring together up to 9 speakers who will be asked to present their views on how genomic and non-genomic data can be integrated to guide precision medicine of diverse human populations.

• Greg Gibson (Regents Professor, School of Biological Sciences
• King Jordan (Professor, Director Bioinformatics Program
• Joseph Lachance (Associate Professor, School of Biological Sciences

Single Cell Spatial Omics

The field of single cell spatial omics is growing fast, thanks to global consortia such as the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) and the Human Biomolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP), and also due to reduced next-generation sequencing (NGS) costs. Arguably, the biggest challenge in realizing the full potential of “spatial omics” techniques is the need for analytical tools that maximize our ability to extract testable hypotheses from the rich but noisy data sets. Thus, the AWSOM ’23 workshop will seek to bring together Atlanta-area strengths in computational science and machine learning at the same forum as technology developers and biologists, to strategically determine the thrust areas for future research.

• Saurabh Sinha | Professor & Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Engineering
• Manoj Bhasin | Associate Professor, Dept.of Biomedical Engineering
• Maneesha R Aluru | Senior Research Scientist, School of Biological SciencesGreg Gibson | Regents Professor, Tom and Marie Patton Chair, School of Biological Sciences

Computational and Mathematical Approaches to Theoretical Neuroscience

Understanding how the human brain works is one of the major challenges of our times. There has been a lot of progress on modeling phenomena at micro scale, such as the model of a neuron, of the chemical channels in a Synapse, learning models for updating weights in neurons etc. Such models have also inspired the models behind modern deep learning architectures. Rapid developments in neuro imaging at both micro and macro levels has enabled us to look at brain phenomena at unprecedented scale. However, an overarching model that explains the macro behavior of the brain is still not found. There have been several exciting steps towards this direction in the last decade from researchers at the intersection of several fields including computational neuroscience, theoretical CS, and probability. The focus of this seminar series is to invite researchers in this space to Georgia Tech, so that students and faculty at GT can pick up and contribute to this young and emerging field.

• Maguluri, Siva Theja Assistant Professor; Industrial & Systems Eng
• Choi, Hannah | Assistant Professor, Mathematics
• Mukherjee, Debankur | Assistant Professor, Industrial & Systems Engr
• Vempala, Santosh S | Professor, School of Computer Science

Sunny Workshop: A Julia Package for The Modeling of Spin Dynamics in Quantum Materials

In recent years, working with scientists at the University of Tennessee and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), we have developed a simulation package called Su(n)ny, that uses Monte- Carlo techniques to calculate the spin dynamics of systems of interests. The Su(n)ny package is written in Julia and currently hosted on Github: https://github.com/SunnySuite/Sunny.jl. Development took place in the last year and a half. Last month, we presented our work for the first time during a workshop at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, as well as tutorials on how to use this package: https://github.com/SunnySuite/SunnyTutorials/tree/main/tutorials, see also the introductory video here: https://mourigal.gatech.edu/public/Sunny-Install-Video-Mourigal.mp4 The package was very well received by our community, and it is now time to accelerate its deployment in realistic community use cases, by coupling it to the modeling of real data, porting it on GPU/Leadership class computers, advertising it more broadly, and including AI/ML methodologies to extract models from data. Learn About the Package Here https://docs.juliahub.com/Sunny/atBCQ/0.3.0/

• Martin Mourigal | Associate Professor; School of Physics

IDEaS leverages expertise and resources from throughout Georgia Tech's colleges, research labs, and external partners, to define and pursue grand challenges in data science foundations and in data-driven discovery in various fields. For updates on these workshops and other IDEaS events, please visit our website.

- Christa M. Ernst