The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $4 million to the Columbia-led Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub to support the consortium’s work finding data-driven solutions to some of the biggest challenges in health care, energy, finance, urban policy, and education.
As the lead agency, Columbia identifies high-priority needs and builds partnerships with other universities, foundations, private research organizations, and companies to undertake projects with real-world impact. The Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub is one of four US regional innovation hubs funded by NSF.
Jeannette M. Wing, the director of Columbia’s Data Science Institute and principal investigator for the Northeast Big Data initiative, said the new NSF award will allow the hub to expand its work in two ways: “first, by addressing the crosscutting themes of data privacy and data ethics to ensure positive social impact, and second, by coordinating with the other regional hubs toward a national network of data-science institutions.”
