Our campus is home to an incredibly active array of institutes, labs, departments, and facilities that are key data science resources spanning UC Berkeley's diverse research interests. In order to better understand each group's expertise and experience, last semester, we began inviting directors and mangers from each of these organizations to BIDS to give a brief 10-minute overview of their resources. We are calling the series "Data Points @ Cal." These brief talks are presented during our BIDS Tea hour that we host on Mondays at 3:00 p.m. If you'd like to attend our future gatherings, you can always check our events page to learn more about upcoming activities, or join our email list to receive regular updates.
While we still have many more groups to cover, I am happy to present the first nine of our series embedded below. You can also view all of these videos and more through our YouTube channel or our videos page.
We are incredibly grateful to the generous speakers who took the time to join us and share their experience, and we look forward to another great semester with similarly engaging opportunities ahead!
Berkeley Initiative for Global Change Biology (BiGCB)
David Ackerly
The BiGCB uses state-of-the-art tools and technologies to mobilize historic and modern biological data to understand how organisms and ecological systems have responded to past global change events. This will improve our forecasting of biological system response to future global change.
California Digital Library (CDL)
Stephen Abrams
In collaboration with the UC libraries and other partners, the California Digital Library has assembled one of the world’s largest digital research libraries and changed the way that faculty, students, and researchers discover and access information.
Center for Computational Biology (CCB)
Rasmus Nielson
CCB was established in 2003 through the Chancellor’s New Ideas Initiative, an outgrowth of the 2002 Strategic Academic Plan, to expand the research base at the university and produce the next generation of leaders in the fundamental and applied biological sciences. Administratively housed in the Berkeley component of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, the mission of CCB is to support interdisciplinary research on the broad array of subjects that cover the interface between computation and biology and to foster graduate and undergraduate education in the field.
Center for Information Technology (CITRIS)
Camille Crittenden
CITRIS creates information technology solutions for many of our most pressing social, environmental, and health care problems. CITIRS was created to “shorten the pipeline” between world-class laboratory research and the creation of start-ups, larger companies, and whole industries. CITRIS facilitates partnerships and collaborations among more than 300 faculty members and thousands of students from numerous departments at four University of California campuses with industrial researchers from over 60 corporations.
Computational Cognitive Science Lab (CoCoSci)
Tom Griffiths
The Computational Cognitive Science Lab's research goal is to understand the computational and statistical foundations of human inductive inference and to use this understanding to develop better accounts of human behavior and better automated systems for solving the challenging computational problems that people solve effortlessly in everyday life. They pursue this goal by analyzing human cognition in terms of optimal or "rational" solutions to computational problems.
Computational Research Division at the Berkeley Lab
David L. Brown
The Computational Research Division conducts research and development in mathematical modeling and simulation, algorithm design, data storage, management and analysis, computer system architecture, and high-performance software implementation. They collaborate directly with scientists across the Berkeley Lab, the Department of Energy, and industry to solve some of the world’s most challenging computational and data management and analysis problems in a broad range of scientific and engineering fields, including materials science, biology, climate modeling, astrophysics, fusion science, and many others.
Experimental Social Science Laboratory (XLab)
Don Moore
Founded in 2004, the XLab is a laboratory for conducting experiment-based investigations on issues of interest to social scientists. XLab enables researchers to explore the wellsprings of human decision making, especially where it involves decisions with monetary consequences. The XLab is thus an "economics wind tunnel" whereby social scientists can test out various theories that help us understand economics and other forms of human behavior.
Geospatial Innovation Facility (GIF)
Nancy Thomas
The GIF at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources provides leadership and training across a broad array of integrated mapping technologies. Our goal is to help people better understand the changing world through the analysis and visualization of spatial data. We develop engaging applications that leverage and build upon state-of-the-art geospatial and web technologies and provide opportunities for researchers to learn how they can use spatial data to answer critical questions.
Sustainable Infrastructures Initiative
Therese Peffer
The Sustainable Infrastructures Initiative (formerly i4Energy) is a vibrant community of researchers and innovators rooted in its three founding institutions: the University of California’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, the California Institute for Energy and Environment, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. With partners in industry and government, this powerful research collaboration is focused on creating an integrated information infrastructure that will transform our energy grid into a cooperative, “aware” energy network that is both efficient and able to use sustainable energy sources.
