CSL hosts successful symposium on big data

The Symposium on Frontiers in Big Data, hosted by CSL on Sept. 23-24, brought together more than 400 in-person attendees, 27 speakers, and rich discussion in topics ranging from big data in agriculture systems to machine learning. In addition, there were 633 views of the live webcast throughout the event.

The conference, supported by the Grainger Engineering Breakthroughs Initiative at Illinois, examined big data’s role in solving real-world problems. These discussions come at a time when the amount of data we can generate exceeds our ability to store, analyze, and curate it, so expanding and developing more advanced analysis and optimization techniques could lead to breakthroughs.

“There’s value in bringing many different perspectives together. You can understand what the real problems are, what the techniques are to deal with data, and how they all fit together,” said Mihai Pop, keynote speaker and professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland. “It’s important to have the breadth.”

The major areas of topics included fundamental challenges and systems in big data research, and big data in agriculture systems, bioinformatics, machine learning, optimization, and social networks. Each category featured researchers who are navigating particular areas and challenges within their field.

“Big data research shows us that scientists need to identify real, relevant problems, do experiments and gather the data to analyze. Data doesn’t come from a vacuum, it gives you a picture of the real world. It’s important to know what you’re looking for even before you do experiments,” said Olgica Milenkovic, a session speaker and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois. “And we need diverse approaches to analyzing data--it’s good to have people with backgrounds in statistics and theoretical computer science collaborating on problems.”

The diverse audience included students, faculty, and staff from various disciplines who engage with big data in their day-to-day work.

“The symposium has been really useful in helping me better understand how big data will affect my field of study,” said Jiaqui Mu, an ECE doctoral student who is studying natural language processing. “I thought the line-up of speakers was really good.”

As big data research progresses, collaborating across fields will be an important part in solving the complex problems of our society.

“On campus, just like this conference, I know there’s been a push to bring together a variety of disciplines because amazing things happen when we do that,” said Harrison Kiang, a big data developer at NextGear Capital who is also pursuing a master of computer science in data science, a new online professional master’s degree at Illinois. “At this conference, we’re bridging different disciplines—systems people, math people, and others—and that gets great results. Companies are interested in it, researchers are interested in it, the government is interested in it. It’s really exciting.”

Symposium Chair Klara Nahrstedt echoed those sentiments.

“I believe this symposium was so popular because it addressed a significant field of national importance—one that has tremendous impact on so many industries,” said Klara Nahrstedt, director of CSL and the Ralph M. and Catherine V. Fisher Professor of Computer Science. “And we couldn’t have a better group of speakers, who were able to address the gamut of challenges and opportunities facing big data.”