Industry Engagement

The Center supports innovative data science research across a broad range of established and emerging areas. With faculty from multiple disciplines and areas of expertise, the Center can support a wide range of business objectives. Commonly applied data science methods include but are not limited to artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, data mining, and statistical and computational analysis.

Health analytics and digital health
Imaging and image understanding
Optics
Computer/human vision
Life sciences and biomedicine
Immersive and interactive systems

Complex systems and network data science
Economics and business data analytics
AI-augmented learning and work
Defense and security
Environment and energy

Data-driven analysis can provide critical insight to inform business decisions that improve efficiency, bolster revenue, and mitigate the risk of capital investment. As a Center of Excellence in Data Science, we bring university-level expertise and technology to our industry partners. We can enhance existing data science efforts or work on a research project from start to finish.

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Collaboration with Researchers and Faculty

The goal of the Center’s Collaborative Research Program is to stimulate economic growth in New York State by promoting technology transfer from our universities to companies operating in New York State. If you’re interested in participating in a collaborative project with the Center, you must be a business/organization in New York State and be prepared to be actively engaged with the project, financially sponsoring the research, and/or providing assessment of its economic impact.

Collaborative projects can be initiated by either an interested organization or a faculty member seeking an industry partner. Organizations interested in starting a project can browse areas of expertise from the Center’s distinguished researchers or Goergen Institute faculty. You are encouraged to contact faculty members directly using email addresses provided in their respective bios. If required, the Center can help connect organizations with data science experts from other universities in New York.

In this video learn some of the benefits of CoE collaboration. Zhiyao Duan of the University of Rochester, worked with Pete Soufleris, the CEO of voice biometrics company, IngenID. Soufleris shares how the CoE grant has impacted his company and Dr. Duan explains the value of the partnership to him and his students. The collaboration between researchers, faculty members, and industry partners has significant implications for economic growth in New York State.

View Video

How to Apply

Spring 2024 Calls for Proposals

Principal Investigators wanting to apply for funding should download and complete the forms below by April 30, 2024. If you have any questions about the forms or the program, please contact Nick Koziol at n.koziol@rochester.edu.

Forms

Three Students and a professor in front of a presentation screen

Capstone/Practicum Projects

Capstone and practicum course students have successfully completed a rigorous set of upper-level undergraduate or graduate level coursework in computational statistics, data mining, machine learning and computational tools in data science. Since the program was launched in 2016, over 75 projects from 45 companies have been offered to students, spanning a broad range of industry segments including:

Marketing/Customer Analytics

Healthcare

Government/Public Agencies

Agriculture

Financial services

Submit A Proposal

Contact:
Nick Koziol, Manager of Business Engagement and Communications of the New York State Center of Excellence in Data Science.
n.koziol@rochester.edu

Capstone Students on the Steps posing for a picture in front of a building

As a partnering organization, you supply the data with which students engage in semester-long, team-based analytics projects. Students gain valuable experience working on real life problems while partnering organizations benefit from in-depth analysis conducted by students trained in contemporary data science techniques, equipped with state-of-the-art computational technology, and supported by faculty. Students tackle a wide range of research topics including, but not limited to:

Consumption Trends and Change Factors

Customer Analysis

Causality Analysis

Pricing/Demand Analysis

Preventative Maintenance

Text Mining in Social Media

The Process

Each project begins with the partnering company presentation highlighting the following:
• Business needs
• The goals of the data analytics effort
• A description of the available data

Data

Business provides data for analysis
No personally identifiable information in the data sets or problem descriptions
Follows your organization’s 3^rd party data transfer rules
Data sets must be accessible to students as flat file (CSV) or by remote access to company partner’s data base or data warehouse

Business Problem

Articulates clearly in a well-defined problem statement of one or two paragraphs
Requires statistical analysis or machine learning to solve (e.g. predictive modeling, data mining, knowledge discovery, statistical correlations, visualizations).
Calls for some exploratory analysis.
Calls for some data wrangling/munging.
Can be solved in programming languages like: R, Python, and Java.
Offers a contact who can communicate with student teams over the duration of the project.

Schedule

The capstone project course is typically held in the fall semester, while the practicum course is held in spring. Accordingly, the following deadlines are set for the respective courses:

	Capstone	Practicum
Partner Organization Engagement	July 15	December 1
Project Kick-off	Mid September	Mid-February
Final Presentation	Early December	Early May

Connect with Us

The Center offers the opportunity for business organizations to work with faculty through Research Collaborations so you can have access to the technical and domain expertise to effectively address your challenges. You can also engage undergraduate and graduate students in, Internships, and Capstone/Practicum projects. We can provide an initial consultation to help you determine the best course of action to fulfill your objectives and to provide guidance on what’s required to submit a proposal.