Data and AI center coming to campus

The new Utah State Univeristy Data Science and Artifical Intelligence Center is set to open on Tuesday, Jan. 14.

According to the DSAI proposal, the need for a center of this nature is becoming increasingly important as the use of AI and data science rises across the country.

“Data science is a growing, interdisciplinary field that includes the management, analysis, and visualization of data to make evidence-based decisions. With so much of today’s STEM innovation being data-driven, the ability to collect, analyze, and operationalize data is critical to industry and academic success. Additionally, recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are playing an increasingly crucial role in this process. Thus, high wage jobs in data science and AI are increasing rapidly in the state of Utah and across the country,” the proposal stated.

The opening kick-off will begin at 3 p.m. at the Huntsman Hall Perry Pavilion. Opening remarks will be given by USU President Elizabeth Cantwell, followed by AI founding fellow at Recursion Pharmaceuticals and the Scientific director of Valence Labs Berton Earnshaw as the keynote speaker. Refreshments will be served, and the kick-off is open to anyone who would like to attend.

The center’s director Kevin Moon shared the university hopes the center will facilitate collaboration within the data science and AI community on campus as well as bring in new people who might be interested.

According to Moon, plans for the center began a few years ago when they noticed there was a lack of collaboration between members working in the DSAI field on campus.

“There are a lot of people, specifically faculty at Utah State, who work in the area of data science and AI, but they’re spread across campus in multiple different departments and don’t really talk to each other or even know who each other are,” Moon said.

Several different colleges across campus pledged money to account for the required annually for the center’s events. The proposal for the center states while additional funding may sometimes be required, they have plans to obtain funds through other outlets such as grants, sponsorships, state funding, university central funding and future facilities and administration rate revenue.

The center is just as much for students as it is for faculty. It aims for better student cohesion, course and degree integration and industry engagement.

“We’d like for faculty and students to have stronger connections to businesses, to industry, whether that takes the place of a form of internships or industry talks or research collaborations. Either way, I think, build a good strength, having those connections,” Moon said.

Moon also stated the research will help students at both graduate and undergraduate levels as many of the students will participate in the center’s research efforts and apply those experiences to their future careers.

“There are a few things that we’re hoping will happen from this. One is that we really are able to accelerate research productivity at the university by building better collaboration or methods for collaboration in various disciplines here at Utah State, so that we’re able to leverage the great power that’s available in data science and AI tools in their specific applications,” Moon said.

More information can be found on the center’s website usu.edu/dsai/.

“The demand for data-driven insight and solutions continues to surge across all academic disciplines, and we are confident that the proposed Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Center will help Utah State meet the challenge of tackling the data problems of the future,” the proposal stated.

— sariah.maez@usu.edu