Recap: Big Data symposium brings experts from NASA, IBM, Google, Deere, and Academia among others to Innovation Campus

The Future of Big Data Symposium
The Future of Big Data Symposium

In an effort to connect and share insights with UNL faculty, students and postdocs in the computational sciences, experts specializing in data management, analytics, and the future of information gathered at Nebraska Innovation Campus for the UNL Symposium on the Future of Big Data.

View the Videos at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh0k4GzppsqF70qU3SAblo-Wcep9fQCBH


Welcomed by Steve Goddard, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research; Jennifer Clarke, Director, Computational Sciences Initiative; Archie Clutter, Dean, Agricultural Research Division; and Dan Hoyt, Associate Dean for Faculty, College of Arts and Sciences, the two day symposium showcased researchers from academia, government, and the private sector with lectures and a poster session that explored big data’s impact on many fields of human endeavor including Agriculture & Natural Resources, Physics, Engineering, Social Sciences, Statistics, and Library Technology.

“The event provided an opportunity for students and postdoctoral researchers to discuss problems, solutions and the future of the expanding field,” says Jennifer Clarke, Director of the Computational Sciences Initiative, a university-wide initiative to develop research and educational opportunities in big data sciences. “Our intent was to bring together the UNL community with representatives from federal agencies, industry, and academia to explore the challenges and opportunities that come with our abilities to collect, store, and analyze ever growing collections of data”.

In conjunction with the Heuermann Lecture series, moderator, Orion Samuelson, agricultural broadcaster with WGN Chicago, was joined by panelists Barb Glenn, National Association of State Directors of Agriculture; Marcy Tessmann, Charleston-Orwig; Kevin Murphy, Food Chain Communications; and Ronnie Green, Harlan Vice Chancellor of IANR and NU vice president for agriculture and natural resources to discuss, "What Does Agricultural Communication Mean in the 21st Century?"

A poster session gave graduate students and postdoctoral candidates the opportunity to showcase their research and creative activity in data science and earned the top five gift certificates to the UNL Computer Store. Selected posters included:

“In vivo selection of a synergistic symbiotic”
Janina Krumbeck, graduate student, School of Biological Sciences

“Evaluation of the Persistence of Bifidobacterium longum ssp. longum AH1206 in the Human Gastrointestinal Tract and its Effect on the Resident Bacterial Community”
Maria Maldonado-Gomez, graduate student, Food Science and Technology

“Using a High-frequency Monitoring Network to Quantify Uncertainties of Sampling Strategies in Agricultural”
Kaycee Reynolds, graduate student, School of Natural Resources

“Structural constraints are sufficient to threshold the functional annotation of short metagenomic reads”
Rohita Sinha, postdoc, Food Science and Technology

“How many words do people know? A study of receptive vocabulary size of Russian native speakers”
Grigory Golovin, postdoc, Physics and Astronomy

A tour of the newly completed NIC Conference Center was also conducted by Dan Duncan, Executive Director of the NIC. http://innovate.unl.edu/.

The Computational Sciences Initiative is a university-wide initiative to develop research and education opportunities in Big Data Sciences. For more information visit http://bigdata.unl.edu/home or contact Jennifer Clarke, PhD
Director, Computational Sciences Initiative
at jclarke3@unl.edu.

Read more about the Heuermann Lecture series, hosted by the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln: http://heuermannlectures.unl.edu/.