TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) — Florida A&M University and five other Historically Black Colleges and Universities are teaming up to create a network of researchers across the HBCU community.
With the help of the National Science Foundation, the schools are building a network of data science and business analytics researchers, scholars and industry partners designed to inspire and extend a culture of academic development and research collaborations across the country.
Along with FAMU, the partnering schools - Alabama A&M University, Bowie State University, Morehouse College, Johnson C. Smith University, and Norfolk State University – each recently received a $100,000 seed grant award from the NSF South Big Data Hub to put this plan into place.
“We are working to expand a culture of data science and analytics research and academic curriculum development at FAMU,” said co-lead Jason Black, associate professor in the FAMU School of Business and Industry. “Through this new program, we hope to not only strengthen our data science efforts here at FAMU but create a strong community of data science researchers among all of our HBCU institutions.”
The HBCU Data Science Consortium seeks to provide an accessible and beneficial platform within the HBCU community that will promote collaboration and support the “cross-pollination” of data analysis tools, data, and ideas across the HBCU community.
This goal will be accomplished by a structured three-tiered approach:
- An Inaugural HBCU Data Science Workshop, to be held virtually Feb. 19-20, 2021.
- A monthly virtual HBCU focused Data Science Workshop Series that brings together researchers, faculty, and industry partners around themed data science and business analytics topics.
- A Closing HBCU Data Science Celebration, a conference designed to share best practices and outcomes of research grants and other academic and career development activities and build future collaborations.
Additionally, the HBCU-DSC will fund five research mini-grants throughout the grant cycle awarded to applicants that attend the Inaugural Workshop, the results of which will be presented at the Closing Celebration.
