The College of Information congratulates Dr. Junhua Ding, and Dr. Jiangping Chen of the Information Science Department on their collaborative efforts which earned a new grant from the National Science Foundation. The award totals $359,879 for a three-year project, entitled "R.E.U. Site: Data Analytics and Information Retrieval."
According to Dr. Ding the objective of this project is, “to provide a supportive and engaging research and learning environment for students to build research experiences in data analytics and information retrieval, the students will develop broadly applicable research skills, enhance skills in research collaboration and communication, and explore research interests in data science.”
The project is expected to provide research experiences for undergraduates in Data Analytics and Information Retrieval at the University of North Texas. “What’s extraordinary about this project is there’s a call to all students across the country. This site would solidify our leadership position in data science research and education and as an R.E.U. site," says Ding. According to the National Science Foundation website, an REU site/program stands for Research Experiences for Undergraduates.
The College Of Information, R.E.U. site will be a ten-week research program for ten undergraduate students, each summer for the next three years. During the ten weeks, each student engages in closely mentored research, under the advising of a faculty mentor, in one major research topic in data analytics and information retrieval. "It would create a collaborative platform for a group of productive and active researchers, and it would offer an opportunity for faculty to work with a group of talented and motivated undergraduate researchers. The research results and experiences would be integrated into teaching to improve our educational experience," Dr. Ding.
The faculty-student interaction, as well as interaction among students, take many different forms. The project supports continual mentoring of students after the summer program.
The program will provide lectures, workshops, research seminars, and other activities to enhance the research experience. Ding says they will introduce the students to different research opportunities through the following sample research projects including data analytics of biomedical images, content-based image retrieval, information retrieval of large-scale text collections, and social media information retrieval for disaster research.
The R.E.U. site leverages the expertise of the faculty mentors in data analytics, computational linguistics, and information retrieval to develop state-of-the-art integrated research projects in data analytics and information retrieval for more effectively advising students in research. The research projects cover the fundamental issues in algorithms, models, tools, and applications of both data analytics and information retrieval
Ten undergraduate students will be considered each year, and up to five could be admitted from UNT.
Students who are interested in the program must be a computer science major or related discipline. They must be an incoming sophomore, junior or senior with a strong academic record. Students from an underrepresented group and academic institutions with limited research opportunities are especially welcome to apply. The deadline for the completed application is March 20, 2019. The first cycle of the program will begin on May 24th, 2019. You can find additional information on the program website at https://reu.ci.unt.edu (coming soon).