Transforming Analytical Learning in the Era of Big Data: A Summer Institute in Biostatistics and Data Science

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PROJECT SUMMARY The global pandemic that we are currently facing has further underscored the importance of harnessing information from heterogeneous data sources and turning them into actionable knowledge. Building a diverse, intellectually dynamic and socially progressive workforce in data science is more important than ever. We propose a six-week long undergraduate summer institute in Biostatistics and Data Science: “Transforming Analytical Learning in the Era of Big Data” to be held in person at the Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan (U-M), Ann Arbor, with a group of approximately 30 undergraduate students from 2022-2026. The program builds on the success of our existing Big Data Summer Institute (BDSI) supported by a NIH BD2K Courses and Skills grant award (2016-2018) and a SIBS award from NHLBI (2019- 2021). Over the past five years we have trained 204 undergraduate students. Of the students who have finished their undergraduate degree, approximately 52% have pursued graduate education in a relevant discipline and 32 have already enrolled in a relevant graduate program at the University of Michigan. Our past cohort contains approximately 52% women and 17% underrepresented minority students. We plan to expose program students to diverse techniques, skills and problems at the intersection of Big Data and Human Health. We primarily focus on four genres of health Big Data arising in Electronic Health Records, Genomics, Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Imaging. The mentored research projects will be defined primarily in cardiovascular and infectious diseases in collaboration with clinicians and public health scientists. The trainees will be taught and mentored by a team of interdisciplinary faculty from Biostatistics, Statistics, Computer Science and Engineering, Epidemiology and Medicine, reflecting the shared intellectual landscape needed for Big Data research. At the conclusion of the program there will be a capstone symposium showcasing the research of the students via poster and oral presentation. There will be lectures by U-M researchers, outside guests and a professional development workshop to prepare the students for graduate school. There will be a series of panel discussions, focus groups and workshops on the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion and ethics in data science and interactive programming that discuss the role of data science in reducing health disparities. Along the way students are expected to form lasting bonds over shared research experiences and social activities. The program has strong institutional support from multiple units and centers on campus and leverages the cross-disciplinary intellectual richness of the University of Michigan. The resources developed for the summer institute, including lectures, assignments, projects, template codes and datasets will be freely available through a Wiki page and a YouTube channel so that this format can be replicated anywhere in the world. This democratic dissemination plan will lead to access of teaching and training material in this new field of health data science across the world. The overarching goal of our summer institute in big data is to recruit and train the next generation of data scientists using a non-traditional, active learning paradigm and engage them in influential research related to human health. We aspire to teach, mentor, grow undergraduate trainees in ways that will shape their vision for a career in data science. Our goal is to create an inspiring educational experience that will have a transformative impact on the future career trajectories of our trainees. Our long-term objective is to create a skilled and diverse research workforce to handle some of the pressing challenges in biomedical big data.