Shortly after being named University of Washington Provost, Anne Marie Cauce (now the UW’s president) asked eScience Founding Director Ed Lazowska and Steering Committee member Werner Stuetzle to advise on additional steps to undertake to ensure that the University of Washington was a leader in data-intensive discovery. Under the Provost’s Initiative in Data-Intensive Discovery, the Provost will consider providing 50% support on an ongoing basis for faculty hires who excel both in advancing data science methodology and in data-intensive discovery in some field.

“We believe that the best way to advance this cause,” write Lazowska and Stuetzle in the initiative, “is to hire additional faculty members who do cutting edge research on new methodology for data-intensive discovery and whose teaching and outreach will put the new tools and techniques into the hands of UW’s broad base of outstanding researchers.”

Under the direction of the eScience Institute, faculty hired under the initiative owe half of their teaching and half of their service to campus-wise data science activities, with a five-person Advisory Group (Ginger Armbrust, Tom Daniel, Mark Ellis, Ed Lazowska, and Werner Stuetzle) offering advice to the Provost regarding the use of the initiative’s funds.

To date, UW has hired Sasha Aravkin (Applied Mathematics), Bing Brunton (Biology), Steve Brunton (Mechanical Engineering), Mario Juric (Astronomy), Sham Kakade (Statistics and Computer Science & Engineering), and Emilio Zagheni (Sociology). “All extraordinary additions to UW’s faculty,” says Lazowska.

Now, President Cauce and Interim Provost Jerry Baldasty have announced that they will provide two additional half-positions. With one position still remaining from previous allocations, this brings the currently available Provost’s Initiative slots to three, beyond the six already allocated.

This is really fantastic news and we’d like to encourage everyone to help spread the news.

Details and more information about Provost’s Initiative in Data-Intensive Discovery can be found on the Provost’s Initiative page.