$20 million to help researchers use data

State computing effort also offers learning opportunities to college students

FAYETTEVILLE — Sharing large amounts of data will become easier for researchers in Arkansas with help from a $20 million National Science Foundation grant that also aims to expand learning opportunities for college students across the state, said Jack Cothren, a University of Arkansas professor and the project’s coordinator for scientific research.

The five-year grant awarded to the state Economic Development Commission’s Division of Science and Technology — in partnership with several universities — will help create a statewide computing effort known as the Arkansas Research Platform, UA has announced.

More than 40 researchers will work together on projects in the field of data analytics and data science. The full collaboration is named Data Analytics that are Robust and Trusted, or DART.

Along with research, the project’s “other equally important component is workforce development and education,” said Cothren, a geography professor who is director of UA’s Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies.

In addition to federal money, the state is providing $4 million in matching funds.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson, in a statement released by the state Economic Development Commission, said he’s “proud of the many entities that are coming together to make this grant possible, and I can’t wait to see how the results of their research impact our economic bottom line.”

Students in both undergraduate and graduate programs at various universities will gain experience in data analytics techniques and “real problems” that require heavy use of data, Cothren said.

For example, data drives efforts in business, whether it’s to understand customer needs or to ship products efficiently, Cothren said.

Many of the state’s biggest companies “are at some level just data processors,” Cothren said. These companies “need data analytics and data scientists more than ever,” he said.

Cothren said so far 18 colleges and universities have signed on to participate.

Among them is Shorter College, a private, two-year liberal arts college in North Little Rock also classified by the U.S. Department of Education as one of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCU.

The college this fall is beginning a new degree program in computer science, said Demetrius Gilbert, associate dean of academic and student affairs.

“Within the computer science degree, we are adding a component of coding in data analysis,” Gilbert said. By taking part in the statewide effort, a goal is for students — about 10 to 20 are expected in the first computer science cohort — to gain experience in data analytics and be better able to contribute to the workforce, Gilbert said.

UA this fall is beginning a new bachelor’s degree program in data science.

“Part of what this project is doing is trying to expand that program to other universities,” Cothren said, saying that while UA has several tracks of study in areas including business and computer science, there might be other tracks that can be developed at other schools.

The federal grant comes from the National Science Foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR.

Jurisdictions are eligible for the EPSCoR program if their amount of research funding from the National Science Foundation is 0.75% or less of the foundation’s total budget, according to the NSF’s website.

Cothren said another goal of the project is to boost the quantity and quality of research in the state.

Researchers from different backgrounds and schools will study ways to better manage data while protecting privacy, Cothren said.

Social scientists and legal scholars are taking part to study ways of ensuring data models are more fully and completely understood, Cothren said.

He referred to concerns raised by some about emerging technologies such as facial recognition. IBM this month announced it would no longer develop facial recognition products, citing how the technology can be used for mass surveillance and racial profiling.

Cothren said a goal is for companies “to be able to take the research that we’re doing and immediately apply it to improve their businesses, and in doing so improve the state of the Arkansas economy.”

Among other schools taking part are: Arkansas State University, Philander Smith College, Southern Arkansas University, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and the University of Central Arkansas.

Grant money will be used to purchase networking equipment to boost the bandwidth available in the state’s ARE-ON high-speed fiber optic computing network that’s used by research institutions in much of the state, Cothren said.

“We’re buying some equipment specifically designed to move large data sets around,” Cothren said. Grant dollars also will go toward more “high-performance” computing resources, he said.

Cothren