A Big Day For Big Data At Dalhousie
July 19th, 2013
A big job doesn’t scare computer science professor Stan Matwin away. In fact, you could say the Canada Research Chair in Visual Text Analytics lives by the words “the bigger, the better.”
Matwin studies big data, which is a term used to describe very large sets of data points that need to be processed quickly. Industries and services across many sectors collect data every day: retailers collect data on what items were purchased at the check out; scientists collect data on ocean temperatures from sensors all over the globe; even police are collecting time and location data on calls they receive.
But that’s a lot of data. So, how can it be used to its full potential?
Enter the Institute for Big Data Analytics. It’s the first academic research institute in Canada committed to expanding knowledge and expertise in big data. Matwin is leading the charge as the institute’s director.
“The institute will help people and companies who have questions their data can answer, but they’re not sure how to find those answers,” explains Matwin. “The key is to find ways that can uncover hidden patterns and intelligence so they can turn their data into something that makes sense and not only addresses challenges, but identifies opportunities as well.”
With a background in developing systems and algorithms that uncover those patterns in data, Matwin is ready to lead a team of researchers to find even more answers.
“I’ve built software programs that predict who in the emergency room will need hospitalization, can recognize oil spills, know how to categorize medical articles, and can catch emerging trends in a political campaign or public opinion,” says Matwin.
Now, Matwin’s working with a company in Montreal who wants to develop an entertainment app based on data collected from social media that can identify someone’s musical taste. Many more research agreements are currently being worked out.
Other institute researchers, like Faculty of Computer Science professor Evangelos Milios, are busy, too. Milios is taking the lead on a visual and text analytics project with The Boeing Company. That work is all about finding new ways to display, mine and interpret the massive amount of data that Boeing collects from each aircraft so aircraft maintenance and safety can be improved. (To read more on the research agreement with Dal and Boeing, check out the Media Centre (2011).
Computer science students will also have a chance to roll up their sleeves and dig in.
“Students will be working on cutting-edge big data research, but they’ll also have a unique opportunity to work on industry-relevant problems. They may even make connections that can help them land internships,” says Matwin.