03-18-2014 | Donald Brown: The Transformative Power of Big Data

CDT and NIA Seminar Series: Big Data, Deep Analytics, and Machine Intelligence
THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF BIG DATA

Prof. Donald Brown, University of Virginia
March 18, 2014, 10:00 am, NIA, Rm 137
Livestream

Abstract:
Massive data acquisition is transforming many areas of society and has the potential to transform many more. This presentation will describe how the University of Virginia is preparing the next generation of scientists, engineers, businessmen, and leaders to address the broadly identifies as interdisciplinary challenge of data integration, while prototyping a set of new courses and research experiences. It will also describe examples in science, medicine and engineering where power of big data analytics being applied.

In astronomy parallel improvements in automation, telescope size and capability, and sensor technology have led to an increase both in the number of datasets and in the size of these newly available datasets by several orders of magnitude. We now have massive data sets characterizing the entire component list of cells and tissues, as well as, Complete maps of genomes that is available in publicly accessible repositories. Remote Sensors can provide detailed real-time information about an environment, which can be fed into ever more complex models.

Speaker Biography:
Prof. Brown is Professor of the Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia. Prior to joining the University of Virginia, Dr. Brown served as an officer in the U.S. Army and later worked at Vector Research, Inc. on projects in medical information processing and multi-sensor surveillance systems. He is now President of Commonwealth Computer Research, Inc. which provides data analysis and technical services for numerous private and governmental organizations. He serves on the National Research Council Committee on Transportation Security has served on the National Academy of Sciences panel on High Performance Computing and Crisis Management and on the NRC Committee on Surface Transportation Infrastructure Security. He is a past member of the Joint Directors of Laboratories Group on Data Fusion and a former Fellow at the National Institute of Justice Crime Mapping Research Center. He has over 100 published papers and two edited books. His research focuses on data fusion, statistical learning, and predictive modeling with applications to security and safety. Dr. Brown is a Fellow of the IEEE and a past President of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society.

Dr. Don Brown has been appointed to lead the new Big Data Institute. The organization will be unusual in its interdisciplinary approach, which will facilitate not only science and technology research, but data-based scholarship in the humanities as many of the problems we face in science, engineering, health care and the humanities require very powerful tools for answering questions across the domains.