UL, Drexel University partner to establish research hub
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the iSchool at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pa. are coming together in order to open a high-tech research centre.
The collaboration has resulted in a national research centre designed for Visual and Decision Informatics (CVDI), officials from UL announced on Wednesday. The project has received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), industry partners, and various governmental figures who are members of the CVDI. Matching university funds have also been awarded.
The CVDI will be one of only 16 current Computer Information and Engineering centres in the United States.
According to the release, the CVDI will "serve as a research hub in developing visual and decision support tools and techniques to enable decision makes in government and industry to fundamentally improve the way their organizations' information is interpreted and analyzed."
The centre's goal is to promote, research and develop the next generation of visual tools, and also to assist governmental and industry bodies to improve information interpretation and analysis techniques -- which is rapidly becoming more important in light of big data.
The scheme aims to promote a new kind of 'decision making environment', which will help those involved in commercial systems to gain and analyze data in particular ways. This applies to many industries -- from computer science and heathcare, to finance and business analysis.
By focusing on research in the fields of Information Visualization, Visual Analytics and Automated Analysis, CVDI aims to be one of the specialist organisations that delivers state-of-the-art developments to relevant industries.
The individual goals of the centre are as follows:
- To accelerate the creation and transfer of knowledge and technology to commercial products;
- To research the technologies and resources required by those in the field of Visual and Decision Informatics;
- To educate students in this field, and provide a future workforce of students qualified to work in informatics.
"Together, we are solving problems that will address our national priorities in innovation, entrepreneurship, economic development and workforce development," Robert Twilley, UL's vice president for research, said within the release.
Solutions are likely to become welcome in light of the emergence of big data, and assist industry players in how businesses can learn to harness and cope with the concept. This partnership will be the first time that a Louisiana university has been designated as a NSF Industry / University Cooperative Research Center, and is the only one currently that will focus specifically on visual and decision informatics research.
Image: CNET
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