News & Events

When: Wednesday, February 26, 2025 from 2pm – 3pm

Where: Amy Gutmann Hall, Room 414

Title: “Closing the Gap Between Scientific Foundation Models and Real-World Applications”

We’re excited to announce Data Points, a new research blog showcasing the work of Penn’s data science community! 

Data Points aims to make data science research more accessible through thoughtful reviews, high-level walkthroughs, and interactive, explorable explanations. The blog series provides a look at the research and researchers currently shaping data science at Penn.

Check out our first post written by AI x Science fellow, Kieran Murphy, here. 

Interested in contributing? Learn more in our How to Contribute guide. We’re excited to collaborate and help bring your ideas to life!

We’re thrilled to share that the Data-Driven Discovery Initiative was recently highlighted in an article by Omnia, the alumni magazine for the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences. The piece, titled “The Missing Link: Connecting Staff and Data Scientists Across the University,” shines a spotlight on our work with IDEAS (SEAS) and IBI (PSOM) to support Penn’s data science community.

Read the full story here to learn more about how we’re connecting data scientists Penn-wide!

The Center for Innovation in Data Engineering and Science (IDEAS) and the Data-Driven Discovery Initiative (DDDI) welcome the inaugural cohort of the Penn AI x Science Postdoctoral Fellows Program! This unique fellowship supports postdoctoral researchers working at the intersection of science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence across the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) and the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS).

The program’s mission is to foster innovation and excellence by promoting interdisciplinary collaboration among fellows and faculty from across Penn’s schools. Fellows benefit from sustained peer interactions, broad exposure to world-class faculty, and opportunities for cross-school mentorship. The new AI x Science fellows will join a community of exceptional Data-Driven Discovery postdoctoral fellows from across the natural and social sciences.

This year, we are excited to welcome Noemi Aepli (linguistics diversity & NLP), Yahav Bechavod (reliable & fair ML), Sourav Dey (chemistry & ML), Nicolò Dal Fabbro (distributed multi-agent AI), Marcelo Guzmán (physics-based learning), Xinquan Huang (neural PDEs & digital twins), Hancheng Min (dynamical systems & ML), Kieran Murphy (information localization), Melanie Segado (movement-based biomarkers), Brynn Sherman (cognition & memory), and Yan Sun (trustworthy ML & model calibration) as the first cohort of the Penn AI x Science Postdoctoral Fellows Program. Congratulations to all our new fellows!

Applications for the DDDI Postdoctoral Fellowship are now open for the 2025/2026 cycle!

The DDDI Postdoctoral Fellowship is an opportunity open to all postdocs in the School of Arts & Sciences who use data science as a significant part of their research methodology. We encourage postdocs across the natural and social sciences to apply.

Accepted applicants will join a group of data-driven postdoctoral fellows who regularly meet together as well as with faculty and visitors to discuss their research and exchange ideas. Fellows will receive a research stipend (up to $5,000 total) for one year to support their research efforts.

The application deadline is January 15th, 2025. Information on how to apply can be found here.

For more details, please visit our information for faculty page, or contact crtwomey@sas.upenn.edu.

Take a break from finals stress and join us for a Data Science & Analytics Minor Study Break! 🎉

DDDI and PDRI/DevLab are hiring a data scientist! This is a unique opportunity at the intersection of data science, interdisciplinary research, and social impact. We’re looking for someone with a strong quantitative and machine learning background, as well as experience in spatial data analysis, to help drive our research projects and contribute to our data science for social good mission.

Interested or know someone who might be? Learn more and apply here.

The Data Driven Discovery Initiative and MindCORE will co-host a seminar featuring Mala Murthy on Friday, October 25th, at noon in the SAIL Room (111 Levin Building). Mala and her group work at the forefront of quantifying and modeling behavior, and causally linking behavior to brain-wide dynamics.

If you’re a graduate student or postdoc please also consider joining for Mala’s lunch immediately following the seminar. Email Jessica Marcus to sign up. Mala is a great person to chat with, so please do not hesitate to join.

Friday 10/25 at 12pm – DDDI + MindCORE Seminar

Title: Circuit Mechanisms for Dynamic Social Interaction
Speaker: Mala Murthy (Princeton, Professor of Neuroscience)
Organizers: MindCORE + DDDI
Date: Friday, October 25th, 2024
Time: 12pm – 1:15pm
Location: SAIL Room (111 Levin Building)

Abstract: Our research explores the neural mechanisms underlying flexibility during natural social interactions – how animals process dynamic sensory cues from a partner, make decisions, and pattern the appropriate action for the current context. During Drosophila social interactions, males produce time-varying songs via wing vibration, while females arbitrate mating decisions. We discovered that male song structure and intensity are continually sculpted by the movements of the female, over timescales ranging from tens of milliseconds to minutes, and we have investigated the underlying circuit mechanisms, from visual processing to the sequencing of actions. My lab has also investigated how song representations in the female brain drive changes in her behavior, again across multiple timescales. To uncover these mechanisms, we have developed new methods for quantification and computational modeling of behavior, as well as for brain-wide neural recording, and we combine these with the genetic and neural circuit tools of the Drosophila model system. We also recently generated the first whole-brain connectome for Drosophila, and I will discuss how we are leveraging this resource, to connect circuit architecture and activity at brain scale to behavior.

A pizza lunch will be served. Please bring your own beverage.

The Penn Libraries and South Asia Studies department present a space for technology orientation. Participants can understand the possibilities and limitations of critical digital humanities tools and will learn Computational Text Analysis (CTA) of content found in manuscripts, inscriptions, maps, and other historical documents. The discussions in these sessions aim to bring together South Asia scholars, digital humanities specialists, data librarians, subject specialists, research software & programming engineers, and manuscript studies curators to engage in conversation about the field of collections as data at large.

The workshop will be held from 9:30am – 5:00pm on October 10th and from 9:30am – 4:00pm on October 11th. The talks are open to the public, may be presented in a hybrid format, and will be recorded for sharing at a later date. See here for more information on the workshop schedule.

In order to participate in this workshop, please apply here. Please note that participants in the hands-on sessions must be prepared to attend both days of the workshop as well as a prior software installation session.

MindCORE and DDDI are excited to co-host an event featuring Lyle Ungar and Konrad Korning on Friday, September 27, at 12 PM.

Join us for their talk, “How to Use Large Language Models,” and explore the capabilities of tools like ChatGPT for effective data analysis and writing. Lyle and Konrad will also share their insights on integrating these models into their workflows and discuss key concerns regarding reliability.