White House Announces Four Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs

As a part of the Obama administration’s Big Data Research and Development Initiative, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced four awards this week, totaling more than $5 million, to establish four Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs (BD Hubs). The four BD Hubs divide the U.S. into regional collaborations, each focused on different Big Data challenges:

• The South Hub, encompassing 16 states and the District of Columbia, will be jointly coordinated by Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of North Carolina;
• The Northeast Hub, containing nine states, will be coordinated by Columbia University;
• The Midwest Hub covers 12 states and will be coordinated by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and,
• The West Hub covers 13 states, including Alaska and Hawaii. It will be jointly coordinated by the University of California, San Diego, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington.

Each of the hubs will pursue Big Data research in key regional priorities such as materials and manufacturing, climate and the environment, smart cities, and managing natural resources.

In addition to the BD Hubs, NSF also announced this week the release of a new solicitation for projects that will leverage the BD Hubs’ data – the BD Spokes initiative.  Each BD Spoke will focus on a specific BD Hub priority area and address one or more of three key issues: improving access to data, automating the data lifecycle, and applying data science techniques to solve domain science problems or demonstrate societal impact. Proposals to establish a BD Spoke are due February 25, 2016.