Trans-Atlantic Workshop on Public Private Partnerships for Big Data Research and Innovation and Workforce Development

University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

The NSF Big Data Innovation Hubs (Big Data Hubs) will organize and co-sponsor a Trans-Atlantic Workshop on Public Private Partnerships for Big Data Research & Innovation and Workforce Development in Versailles, France, on November 20, 2017, in conjunction with the European Big Data Value Forum 2017 (http://www.european-big-data-value-forum.eu), and in cooperation with the EU Big Data Value Association, PICASSO Project, and INRIA, and also work towards organizing additional workshops to ensure a continuing dialogue among US and EU researchers and educators. The goals of the first workshop are to bring together academic and industry actors from the United States and the European Union (EU) to: (1) discuss effective models and practices for supporting academia-industry collaborative research programs in Big Data/data science research and innovation, with particular focus on public-private partnerships (PPP) in the application domains of smart cities, transportation, health, environment, and food-energy-water; (2) identify opportunities for direct bilateral research and innovation collaborations (at the project level and between individual researchers) and data sharing between the US and the EU, especially between the NSF Big Data Hub & Spoke projects and the European BDV PPP Lighthouse projects along the verticals listed above; and (3) discuss effective models and practices for bridging data science workforce needs with the developing academic discipline of data science. Videoconferencing meetings are planned between US and EU researchers to discuss priorities in Big Data research and applications areas, and to plan for potential subsequent workshops. The lessons learned from the first workshop will directly influence and determine the direction and structure of future workshops, after which plans will be drawn up for those future meetings. The intellectual merit of this activity is that it will serve as a platform for bringing the US Big Data Hubs, European Big Data Value Association, and PICASSO project teams and associated communities together for sharing their collective knowledge about successes and pain points in coordinating data science research and innovation activities. This dialogue will afford a deeper understanding of complementary approaches, technologies and policies for (1) building effective public-private partnerships focused on Big Data research and innovation and (2) establishing data science curricula that satisfies the needs of stakeholders across domains and on both sides of the Atlantic. This activity is expected to have significant broader impact?it represents a critical step in forging a productive transcontinental relationship around Big Data research and innovation, facilitating US-EU collaborations and access to international data sets. In addition, it will highlight overlap and synergies between the US Federal Big Data Strategic R&D Plan and EU Big Data Strategic Research Agenda, and will prioritize future and emerging research challenges, which could inform potential jointly funded strategic trans-Atlantic collaborations in Big Data/data science research and innovation. The workshop also will allow participating organizations to explore opportunities for sharing open-source data collections and industry-relevant curricula of Big Data education programs that can be used for workforce development.