Executive Leadership Team Ready for the Next Chapter of CDS
Five Boston University faculty members have been named to a newly formed Executive Leadership Team (ELT) for the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences (CDS).
As part of the bootstrapping of CDS, Associate Provost Azer Bestavros is setting up a faculty leadership team to act in an executive capacity. In many ways, the members of this team are analogous to associate deans in other academic units. Given the embryonic nature of CDS, rather than appoint each person to a distinct role, the group will act as a collective brain trust for CDS – weighing in on all aspects of CDS development.
The CDS ELT currently consists of four at large faculty members (Margrit Betke, Mark Crovella, Yannis Paschalidis, and Wesley Wildman), each appointed to a two year, renewable position, with the Director of the Hariri Institute for Computing (Eric Kolaczyk) serving as ex-officio, reflecting the Institute’s role in supporting the research mission of CDS.
Margrit Betke, professor of computer science, conducts research in computer vision, human-computer interfaces, human computation, medical image analysis, and application of machine learning. She co-leads the Artificial Intelligence Research Initiative (AIR) and the Image and Video Computing Research Group. Betke has developed 2D and 3D methods for detection, segmentation, registration, and tracking o people, bars and birds, vehicles, gestures, live cells, tumors, and more.
As a member of the Task Force to Envision Data Science at Boston University, Betke took part in formative discussions that led to the creation of CDS. This task force helped develop the vision which is shaping how BU is becoming a research and education leader in the rapidly evolving field of data science. Betke also was involved in the development of the PhD program in data science.
As a member of the ELT, Betke will be instrumental in working on interdisciplinary data science and artificial intelligence graduate programs. She will advise closely on the creation and implementation of various co-labs (collaborations among stakeholders across BU and beyond).
Mark Crovella, professor of computer science, has been working in data science, both in industry and academia, for over a decade. He previously served as Chief Scientist for Guavus, Inc, a 500-person “big data” analytics firm in San Mateo, CA. At BU, he championed data science education while serving as Chair of Computer Science for five years.
More recently he has served as the Chair of the Provost’s Curriculum Committee for CDS. That committee developed recommendations around data science degree programs at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels, as well as for certificate programs. These recommendations included learning outcomes that have been adopted by CDS and form the basic expectations of data science degree programs.
As part of the CDS ELT, he will continue to focus on building out aspects of the CDS curriculum, helping guide their implementation, and providing input on advising and teaching.
Yannis Paschalidis is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering, and the Director of the Center for Information and Systems Engineering. His research interests lie in the fields of systems and control, optimization, stochastic systems, machine learning, and computational biology and medicine.
As part of the ad hoc committee on CDS Faculty Affairs – established before the official launch of CDS – Paschalidis advised Provost Jean Morrison and Bestavros on a number of issues including the type of faculty appointments CDS would offer (for both internal joint appointments and new hires), tenure expectations and process, and governance. He has also been a part of the CDS faculty search committee, assisting in recruiting top-notch faculty to BU.
In his own words: “This is a committee with a ton of accumulated experience in computing, data, and information sciences, from faculty affairs and governance to curriculum development, interdisciplinary research coordination, and ethical and responsible conduct of research. I expect that we will form a collegial and effective Leadership team to work with Azer and the BU administration to fulfill the vision of CDS at BU and set a broader example of a structure supporting interdisciplinary, yet coordinated, computing & data science research and education.”
Wesley Wildman, professor of philosophy, theology, and ethics, works in a wide variety of topics, ranging from multidisciplinary, comparative approaches in philosophy of religion to computational policy analysis.
He believes that “CDS is an extremely important university initiative with serious potential to mitigate the problem of academic silos and unite disciplines for the sake of solving pressing social problems.” He has worked especially intensively on two rounds of faculty searches, on surveying faculty about ethics teaching and research, on drafting guidelines for ethical computing in CDS, and on mapping university talent in computational and data-science methods to the humanities, arts, and social sciences.
Moving forward, Wildman will contribute to stabilizing policies and procedures in a unique university unit and to building a culture that prizes multidisciplinary research aiming to make the world a better place.
Eric Kolaczyk, professor of mathematics and statistics, often collaborates with researchers in areas such as bioinformatics and computational neuroscience. His research interests revolve around the statistical analysis of network-indexed data, with particular focus on foundational issues and statistical problems that arise in practice. He also currently serves as the Director of the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering.
He served on the CDS Committee on Faculty Appointments, which delivered initial recommendations for faculty appointment and academic program development for CDS to Provost Morrison. He has also been deeply involved in interviewing and recruiting candidates during past CDS faculty searches, in his role as Hariri director. Lastly, Kolaczyk spearheads the expansion of the BU Data Science Mentor Circles program for graduate students. Inaugurated last year in the Math & Stats department, the mentor program this year is expanding to Biostatistics, CDS, CS, and ECE – with CDS and Hariri co-hosting the program.
“The senior faculty members who represent the ELT have already demonstrated significant interest – and invested their efforts – in the development of CDS to date, and in seeing its vision through. They all are deeply engaged with the mission of CDS and believe in what it adds to the BU landscape,” says Bestavros. “This commitment is crucial as we continue to grow! The CDS ELT will assist in everything from developing new academic programs, to proposing faculty searches, to creating tenure and promotion mentorship. I look forward to continuing the work with the intrepid force of this team behind me.”