Berkeley, NYU, Washington to Collaborate on Moore/Sloan Data Science Initiative

At the White House OSTP Big Data event yesterday, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced an ambitious $37.8M program to build new Data Science environments.  The goal of the program is to foster the development of Data Science tools and techniques in support of Science and to explore the ways in which universities can elevate the role and understanding of Data Science in their overall research endeavor,  both intellectually and organizationally.

Berkeley’s participation is being spearheaded by the newly announced Berkeley Institute of Data Science (BIDS), which is being led by Physicist Saul Perlmutter and counts EECS Chair David Culler and AMPLab Directors Michael Franklin and Ion Stoica among its organizing team.   BIDS will be collaborating with NYU’s Center for Data Science and UW’s E-Science Institute on the project.

The announcement has received coverage in the NY Times and Huffington Post among others.  Fernando Perez has compiled a list of references and stories on the new initiative.