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Data Science Nights

Data Science Nights are monthly talks on data science techniques or applications, organized by Northwestern University graduate students and scholars. Aspiring, beginning, and advanced data scientists are welcome! NICO is thrilled to sponsor these monthly events and support this growing community.

Data Science Nights are currently organized by Huaxia Zhou and Eleanor Degen with administrative support provided by NICO. Please contact the organizers to suggest a speaker or to be added to our mailing list.

Upcoming Events

Data Science Nights - October Meeting

Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 5:20pm (US Central)
Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level

Speaker: Matt Groh, Assistant Professor, Kellogg School of Management

"Deepfake Detection by Humans across Contexts Ranging from Political Speeches to Human Photography to Podcasts"

Talk Abstract and Agenda

Data Science Nights - November Meeting

Tuesday, November 26, 2024 at 5:20pm (US Central)
Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level

Speaker: Stefan Pate, PhD student, Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences Program, Northwestern University

"Tapping Underground Enzymatic Functions to Understand and Direct Metabolic Evolution"

Talk Abstract and Agenda

Past Events

Data Science Nights - September 2024

Tuesday, September 24, 2024 at 5:20pm (US Central)
Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level

Data Science Nights returned on Tuesday, September 24, 2024 with a kick off event. The organizing committee gave lightning talks and moderated discussions during this hour.

Data Science Nights - May 2024

Thursday, May 30, 2024 at 5:20pm (US Central)
Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level

Speaker: Ryan McKeown, PhD Student, Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences Graduate Program (IBiS), Northwestern University "Decreasing False-discovery Rates in Genome-wide Association Studies with Iterative Principal Component Analysis (PCA)"

Data Science Nights - April 2024

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 at 5:20pm (US Central)
Chicago Campus

Speaker: Jenny Ding, PhD Student, Feinberg School of Medicine, Department of Preventive Medicine "SOAR elucidates disease mechanisms and empowers drug discovery through spatial transcriptomics"

Data Science Nights - February 2024

Tuesday, February 27, 2024 at 5:20pm (US Central)
Fisk Hall, Room 114, Evanston Campus

Speaker: Eliza Duvall, PhD Candidate, Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences Graduate Program (IBiS), Northwestern University "Co-expression Network Sparsification via Effective Resistance"

Data Science Nights - November 2023

Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 5:20pm (US Central)
Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level

The November 2023 Data Science Night took featured a Career Panel with four Data Scientists.

Data Science Nights - October 2023

Tuesday, October 31, 2023 at 5:20pm (US Central)
Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level

Speaker: Yingdan Lu, Assistant Professor at the School of Communication, Northwestern University "Understanding the Evolution of Digital Propaganda Through Video-as-Data Methods".

Data Science Nights - May 2023

Thursday, May 25, 2023 at 5:20pm (US Central)
Technological Institute, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston Campus, Room L160

Speaker: Imran Sultan, PhD Student at the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) at Northwestern, "Simulating Everything Everywhere All at Once: Modeling Galaxy Formation"

Data Science Nights - April 2023

Thursday, April 27, 2023 at 5:20pm (US Central)
Technological Institute

Speaker: Mathew Yang, Senior Bioinformatician at NorthShore, “Personalized Medicine and Healthcare at NorthShore University HealthSystem”

Data Science Nights - February 2023

Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 5:20pm (US Central)
Technological Institute or via Zoom

Speaker: Kevin Gallagher, Scientist at NeoGenomics Laboratories, “Spatially-resolved cell phenotyping using MultiOmyx technology”

Data Science Nights - November 2022

Tuesday, November 29, 2022 at 5:20pm (US Central)
Chambers Hall or via Zoom

Speaker: Hengyang Li, PhD Candidate, Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, "Mechanistic Data Science for Mechanical Simulation and Design"

Data Science Nights - October 2022

Tuesday, October 25, 2022 at 5:20pm (US Central)
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

Speakers:

Spencer Hong, 3rd-year PhD Student, Chemical and Biological Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering "The history of genomics told through machine learning"

Yingkang Xie, 5th-year PhD Student, Marketing, Kellogg School of Management "Platform Leakage: Incentive Conflicts in Two-Sided Markets"

Data Science Nights - September 2022

Tuesday, September 27, 2022 at 5:15pm (US Central)
Online via Zoom

Speakers: Emma Krummenacher, Caitlin Casar, and Kitra Razin of 84.51° "Data Science at 84.51°: Building an Automated Dashboard with Power BI and Databricks "

Data Science Nights - May 2022

Tuesday, May 24, 2022 at 5:15pm (US Central)
Mudd Library Room 2210 or via Zoom

Speaker: Wesley Orth, Ph.D. Candidate, Northwestern University Department of Linguistics "The Maze Task: Designing tasks for data quality and web-based social science research"

Data Science Nights - April 2022

Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:15pm (US Central)
Mudd Library or via Zoom

Speakers:

  • Yanrong (Jerry) Ji, PhD in Biomedical Informatics, Senior Data Scientist at CVS Health
  • Sahil Shah, Data Scientist at Shelf Engine
  • Nish Trivedi, MS in Biotechnology, Decision Analytics Associate at ZS Associates
  • Nicolas Wagner, PhD in Material Science and Engineering, Research Staff, Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA)

Data Science Nights - February 2022

Monday, February 28, 2022 at 5:15pm (US Central)
Online via Zoom

Speaker: Emily Webber, Senior Machine Learning Specialist Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services: "A day in the life of the Amazon SageMaker (machine learning) team"

Data Science Nights - January 2022

Wednesday, January 26, 2022 at 5:15pm (US Central)
Online via Zoom and Gather

Speaker: Qian Cao, Visiting Scientist, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Data Science Nights - December 2021

Wednesday, December 1, 2021 at 5:15pm (US Central)
Online via Gather and Zoom

Speaker: Petter Holme, Professor, Institute of Innovative Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan "Games on Complex Networks"

Data Science Nights - October 2021

Thursday, October 28, 2021 at 5:30pm (US Central)
Online via Zoom and Gather

Speaker: Omkar Ranadive, Applied Scientist at Alchera Labs "Using machine learning to detect wildfires"

Data Science Nights - September 2021

Thursday, September 30, 2021 at 5:15pm
Online via Zoom and Gather

From Astrobiology to Retail Data Science at 84.51°

Speakers:

  • Caitlin Casar - Data Science Development Program, 84.51°. 2021 PhD, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Northwestern University. NASA Earth and Space Sciences Fellowship
  • Alexandra Saldan - Senior Data Scientist, 84.51°. 2016 WCAS graduate, Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences and Linguistics

Data Science Nights - June 2021

Tuesday, June 29, 2021 at 5:15pm
Online via Zoom and Gather

Speaker: Juandalyn Burke, Ph.D. Candidate, Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education Department, University of Washington: "Using an Ecological Inference Software Tool to Detect Vote Dilution".

Data Science Nights - May 2021

Wednesday, May 26, 2021 at 5:15pm
Online via Zoom and Gather

Speaker: Brian Martin, Research Fellow, Head of AI in R&D Information Research, Abbvie "Knowledge is Power, Data is Oil, Convergence is an Engine".

Data Science Nights - April 2021

Wednesday, April 28, 2021 at 5:15pm
Online via Zoom and Gather

Speaker: Subhashini Tripuraneni, Executive Director at JPMorgan Chase, leader of the Machine Learning initiatives "AI and Machine Learning to Drive Customer Experience".

Data Science Nights - March 2021

Tuesday, March 30, 2021 at 5:15pm
Online via Zoom and Gather

Speaker: Matt Satusky, Postdoctoral Fellow, Renaissance Computing Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Leveraging the NHLBI BioData Catalyst Ecosystem to Accelerate Heart, Lung, and Blood Research".

Data Science Nights - February 2021

Tuesday, February 23, 2021 at 5:15pm
Online via Zoom and Gather

Speaker: Aviv Landau, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Data Science Institute, Columbia University "Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Identification of Child Abuse and Neglect in Hospital Settings with Implications for Bias Reduction and Future Interventions".

Data Science Nights - January 2021

Wednesday, January 27, 2021 at 5:15pm
Online via Zoom and Gather

Speaker: Bryan Pardo, Associate Professor, McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University. "New directions in deep audio source separation: training without ground truth and automatic model selection"

Data Science Nights - November 2020

Monday, November 23, 2020 at 5:15pm
Online via Zoom and Gather

Speaker: William Miller, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University, title: "Distributed High-Frequency Sensing for Assessing Urban Green Infrastructure and Predicting Flooding".

Data Science Nights - February 2020

Thursday, February 27, 2020 at 6:30pm
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

Speaker: Yian Yin, PhD candidate at the McCormick School of Engineering, titled: "Quantifying the dynamics of failure across science, startups and security" (Nature, 2019). 

Data Science Nights - January 2020

Monday, January 27, 2020 at 6:30pm
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

Speaker: Joe Germuska, Executive Director of the Knight Lab at Northwestern University, titled: "Understanding and Using Census Data". This was followed by a hacking session, including working groups and an introduction to pandas and matplotlib in Python for newcomers by Nicolay Markov.

Data Science Nights - November 2019

Thursday, November 21, 2019 at 6:30pm
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

Speaker: Daniel W. Linna Jr., Director of Law and Technology Initiatives at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, titled: "Artificial Intelligence and Law: Creating our Augmented, Automated, Audacious Future".

Data Science Nights - October 2019

Monday, October 28, 2019 at 6:30pm
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

Speaker: Carlos Gallo from the Feinberg School of Medicine, titled: "Improving suicide prevention services via online chat: a text mining approach".

Data Science Nights - Fall 2019 KICKOFF

Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 6:30pm
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The 2019 fall kickoff of Data Science Nights took place on Wednesday, September 25, 2019. This month featured a talk by IBM Developer Advocate Svetlana Levitan, titled: "Open standards for machine learning model deployment", plus a discussion about topics and working groups for future hacking night sessions.

Data Science Nights - July 2019

Thursday, July 25, 2019 at 6:30pm
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The July Data Science Night took place on July 25, 2019.

Data Science Nights - June 2019

Thursday, June 27, 2019 at 6:30pm
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The June Data Science Night took place on June 27, 2019 centered around the theme: "Deep-learning with Kera".

Data Science Nights - May 2019

Thursday, May 30, 2019 at 6:30pm
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The May Data Science Night took place on May 30, 2019. "Combining R with Python" was the theme for this meeting.

Data Science Nights - April 2019

Wednesday, April 10, 2019 at 6:30pm
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The April 2019 Data Science Night featured a talk titled "Bring Your Dirty Data to Work Day" by the Data Science Night organizers. Attendees learned best practices for handling real world data to save time and reduce headaches.

Data Science Nights - March 2019

Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 6:30pm
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

Speaker: Michael Lucas, Lead Data Scientist at Tempus, and a PhD graduate from the EECS department with a specialization in machine learning and natural language processing.

Data Science Nights - Feb 2019

Wednesday, February 6, 2019 at 6:30pm
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The first Data Science Night of the new year kicked off on February 6, 2019 and hosted members of the Sears Deep Learning Center in partnership with Northwestern's Retail Analytics Council.

Data Science Nights - Dec 2018

Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 6:30pm
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The December 2018 Data Science Night featured a talk titled "Personality Assessment in the Age of Big Data and Machine Learning" by Andrew Hall, a PhD candidate in Northwestern's Department of Psychology, plus project and learning groups.

Data Science Nights - Nov 2018

Thursday, November 1, 2018 at 6:30pm
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The November 2018 Data Science Night featured a talk titled "Introduction to Machine Learning" by Nicholas Wagner and Abhijith Gopakumar from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University, plus project and learning groups.

Data Science Nights - FALL 2018 Kickoff

Monday, October 1, 2018
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The October 2018 kickoff meeting included an introduction to data science and an overview of Data Science Nights, plus project and learning groups.

Data Science Nights - July 2018

July 30, 2018
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The July 2018 meeting featured a talk by Christie Nothelfer, PhD, Northwestern Psychology on “Vision Science in Data Visualization” and also a special breakout session with Prof. Suzan van der Lee, from the Department of Earth and Planetary Science, on hacking the sensors that NU researchers have deployed on campus.

Data Science Nights - June 2018

June 25, 2018
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The June 2018 meeting will feature a talk by Caroline Groth, a Post Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Preventive Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine: "Bayesian Measurement Error and Bayesian Informative Missingness Methods".

Data Science Nights - May 2018

May 21, 2018
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The May 2018 meeting featured a talk by Pantelis Loupos (PhD candidate at the Kellogg School of Management) on “100 million Venmo transactions: The Power of Social Networks in Predicting Non-Contractual Customer Behavior”.

Data Science Nights - April 2018

April 30, 2018
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The April 2018 meeting featured a talk by Kat Albrecht (PhD student in the Amaral Lab and NICO) on “Fundamental Data Science to Investigate Social Problems”.

Data Science Nights - February 2018

February 26, 2018
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The February 2018 meeting had a distinct format compared to previous meetings, with a stronger focus on the breakout sessions. These included: multi-week learning groups, single-evening tutorials, multi-week projects, single-evening projects according to preference of attendees, and the ability to bring your own project or have a code-clinic.

Data Science Nights - January 2018

January 22, 2018
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The January 2018 meeting featured a talk by Joe Germuska of the Northwestern University Knight Lab: "Data Journalism: Big and Small".

Data Science Nights - Nov 2017 Kickoff

November 6, 2017
Chambers Hall, Lower Level

The first Data Science Night featured a talk by Adam Miller (LSSTC Data Science Fellow): "Scikit-learn Soup to Nuts: Developing a Machine-Learning Workflow"
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