About DataLab

Advances in technology have led to exponential growth in the amount and complexity of data. We are at a threshold of an era in which hypothesis-driven science is being complemented with data-driven discovery. The data collected are complex in size, dimension and heterogeneity and provide unprecedented opportunities for new discoveries in theoretical and applied research.  Broadly, data scientists extract meaning from this wealth of data to generate critical insights to drive decision making and innovation. They combine computing, statistics, mathematics, visualization, software development and domain knowledge to make inferences from various forms of information (including but not limited to numerical, text, audio, and visual data).  Thus, data science involves engineering, reproducibility and provenance, and often includes software development and design.

DataLab leverages existing knowledge to tackle complex problems, develop new tools and methods to do so more effectively, and teach their implementation.

About DataLab Flyer

As a cross-university activity, DataLab fosters, promotes and facilitates data science to accelerate discovery at the frontiers of scientific, engineering and social disciplines.  DataLab partners with researchers across UC Davis to push the envelope both within and across disciplines to enable qualitatively novel, interdisciplinary research.  By combining techniques across domains, we problem solve to further both data science application and theory.

DataLab engages in all activities involved in working with data (i.e., identifying, acquiring/accessing, processing, transforming, exploring, modeling, summarizing, visualizing and interpreting data).  In addition to this data research pipeline, we focus on generating and developing novel questions and approaches.  Training activities at the DataLab focuses on the theory, methods, process and tools for working with, interpreting and applying data.  To that end we focus on cultivating curiosity, creativity, communication and critical thinking skills in students and researchers across the University.

Mission

DataLab seeks to promote academic and research excellence through quality programs, engaged researchers, and an innovative research and learning environment and to meet growing industry and academic need for graduates with data science skills. To that end, the DataLab complements existing and developing educational programs to facilitate research in data science and provide a niche for students, faculty and professional researchers seeking to move beyond their individual programs to identify and exploit new opportunities.

Services & Specializations

DataLab collaborates with researchers from all disciplines and career stages to grow data science capacity and community across UC Davis. Through training and educational activities including workshops, classes, data challenges, research and learning clusters, symposiums, and office hours, DataLab supports researchers to develop transparent and reproducible data-intensive research using cutting-edge data science tools, technologies and computational approaches. 

DataLab’s specializations include, but are not limited to:

Open-source software (R, Python, QGIS, Git, Command Line, etc.)

Reproducible research practices and technologies

Data justice and ethics

Data gathering and cleaning 

  • APIs
  • Webscraping
  • Optical character recognition (OCR)
  • Text mining
  • Geospatial Information System (GIS)

Data analysis and prediction

  • Modeling
  • Machine Learning
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP)
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Data exploration and communication

  • Data visualization
  • Virtual Reality
  • Mapping

Weekly office hours are available for individual consultation with DataLab’s data scientists. Calls for competitive incubator “start-up” awards for DataLab research support are announced annually. DataLab partners on research proposals and funded work. 

Governance

DataLab is led by Executive and Associate Directors with advice from faculty Directors and a faculty advisory committee. DataLab emerged from the start-up Data Science Initiative (DSI, 2016-2019) and is administered in the UC Davis Library with oversight by the Vice Provost for Digital Scholarship.

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