Northwestern University hosted its first, official Data Science Night, or “hack night,” on November 6th, 2017. The kickoff brought together over 100 attendees, including undergrads, grad students, postdocs and faculty, as well as some high school students and community members. Attendees heard from Adam Miller, LSSTC Data Science Fellow at CIERA, who gave an interactive presentation on using python and scikit-learn for developing a basic machine learning workflow.
Additional meetings have since been held monthly since January 2018. The June Meeting featured 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 are organized on a voluntary basis by members of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) and the Northwestern Data Science Initiative. The goal is to promote data science and personal and scientific exchange across departments and disciplines. The Data Science Nights’ organizers hope to provide all participants with the chance to build gain visibility and develop their reputation. The organizers are always looking for individuals interested in joining their team, or to share suggestions.