Northwestern Data Science Initiative is soliciting applications to support interdisciplinary collaborations in data science. For the purpose of this funding opportunity, data science (and “big data”) is not defined by the absolute size of the data, but by its increase relative to what has been typical in a discipline. Both Genomics and the Digital Humanities are areas that can benefit from data science approaches.

The Data Science Initiative has been granted funds to help faculty already involved or planning to get involved in Data Science. Funds have been allocated for the retaining and hiring of postdoctoral fellows and for the support of current graduate students. For the first year of funding, the two funding priorities are: seeding new collaborations, and helping collaborations obtain results necessary for applying for funding. Further engagement of supported fellows and students in data-science training activities is strongly encouraged. Applicants will not be funded for more than two Quarters per academic year.

Award: Approximately 20 data science projects per year will be funded at the level of $10K-$50K in direct costs. Funds may be used to support postdoctoral fellows or graduate students.

Application Process:
1. Applications must be submitted by at least two faculty members from different disciplines at Northwestern University that bring complementary areas of expertise to the project for which funding is requested.
2. Applicants submit their application materials at https://grants.nubic.northwestern.edu under Data Science Research Support.
3. A complete application comprises: a) One-page description of the goals of the proposed research and its alignment with the goals of the Data Science Initiative; b) NIH style biosketch of the mentoring faculty members; c) NIH style biosketch (for postdocs) or a resume (for graduate students) of the trainee.

Due: There will be two application deadlines: January 15th, 2016 and March 31, 2016

Please address any questions that you may have to Luis Amaral, amaral@northwestern.edu.