CCI professor named Data Science Fellow

Erik Saule, assistant professor of computer science in the College of Computing and Informatics, has been named a National Consortium for Data Science Fellow for 2015.

The National Consortium for Data Science (NCDS) is a public-private partnership to advance data science and address the challenges and opportunities of big data; Saule was one of three NCDS Data Fellows for 2015.

Each Data Fellow receives $50,000 to support work that addresses data science research issues in novel and innovative ways. It is expected that their work will advance the mission and vision of the NCDS, which formed in early 2013. Data Fellow positions are open to faculty members at NCDS member institutions, which includes University of North Carolina system institutions, Duke University, Texas A & M University and Drexel University.

“I am honored to receive this fellowship, and I am excited to start working with members of the NCDS,” stated Saule. “I hope to collaborate on data science applications and help them scale to be able to process more data, more efficiently.”

Saule’s research project “Toward Machine Oblivious Graph Analysis” explains how graphs are a popular tool used to model a wide range of phenomena and to show the relationships among various entities. For example, graphs can model the physical path of city streets or aisles in a store to analyze traffic patterns and determine the best locations for businesses or for products within a retail store. In medicine, researchers use graphs to model regulatory pathways and gene expression, predict conditions and identify the best drugs to use in treatments.

The explosion of digital data has led to a similar explosion in the computational costs of running graph analyses. New algorithms to deal with this challenge are usually inflexible, requiring a researcher to use a specific type of graph or a particular type of computer system for analysis. Saule’s project aims to develop a framework for performing efficient graph analysis independent of the type of analysis being performed or the computer system used.

“This is the second year we’ve provided Data Fellows awards, and we believe the program is a great way to bring together talented faculty researchers and our industry members who are interested in the practical applications of their work,” Stan Ahalt, chair of the NCDS steering committee and director of UNC Chapel Hill’s Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), one of the founding members of the consortium, stated. “We had applications from across our membership and the quality was outstanding. I know our members look forward to learning more about our new fellows and to understanding how their research will advance data science and help organizations in business, government, and academia address their data challenges.”