Texas A&M Hosts Two-Day Conference On Big Data

Two dozen top experts in data science across academia and industry will gather at Texas A&M University this week for a campus-wide conference to address the latest developments and next big breakthroughs in big data.

Advances in Big Data Modeling, Computation and Analytics is set for September 23-24 in the Stephen W. Hawking Auditorium within the Texas A&M George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy. The two-day conference will feature four keynote speakers — Michael Jordan (University of California, Berkeley), Robert Schapire (Microsoft), Nilanjan Chatterjee (Johns Hopkins University) and Susan Athey (Stanford University) — and four invited sessions on various aspects of big data, including modeling and applications, computing, business and industry.

Texas A&M statistician and co-organizer Bani K. Mallick says registration is closed for the conference, which reached maximum capacity nearly a month ago. Event festivities will kick off Friday (Sept. 23) at 9 a.m. with a welcome from Texas A&M Provost and Executive Vice President Dr. Karan L. Watson and conclude Saturday (Sept. 24) with two concurrent introductory tutorial sessions on data science and cloud computing, respectively, set for 3 to 5 p.m.

Activities are slated to run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day, with an hour-long break for lunch. Each invited session will feature short talks from multiple speakers representing five global corporations (Microsoft, IBM, ABB Inc., EDP Renewables, Smart Blade-Germany) and 12 universities, including five Texas institutions. Friday also will feature a 5 p.m. poster session and reception at the University Club in Rudder Tower.

The conference, hosted by the Texas A&M Department of Statistics as part of the big data theme semester unveiled earlier this year by Texas A&M Dean of Science Meigan Aronson, is jointly sponsored by the College of Science, Dwight Look College of Engineering, Mays Business School, the Institute for Applied Mathematics and Computational Science and the Southeastern Texas Chapter of the American Statistical Association.

For additional information, including a complete schedule of events and speaker abstracts, please visit the conference website.