Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter has appointed Professor Patrice Koehl, a computational biologist in the Department of Computer Science and an active researcher in the UC Davis Genome Center, as the founding director of the new Data Sciences Initiative, effective May 1.

The initiative emerged as a recommendation of the campus’s Big Data Implementation Committee. Hexter appointed the committee members, whom he charged, in part, “to propose the path for developing strong, potentially disruptive academic research and teaching programs that address the opportunities and challenges presented by the Big Data revolution.”

Koehl

As the founding director, Koehl will work with the Data Science Initiative Implementation Committee, faculty and deans, to develop the initiative’s mission and initial strategic plan, including a governance model and funding plan.

In partnership with the implementation committee, Koehl will further define the physical and virtual infrastructure and services needed to support and coordinate various elements of Big Data science at UC Davis, where faculty are already accessing and analyzing data sets of unprecedented dimensions and thereby opening up new vistas for inquiry and discovery.

In appointing Koehl, Hexter extolled his vision for the initiative and its significance for UC Davis, in addition to his combination of technical skills and administrative experience.

“Professor Koehl has the imagination, enthusiasm and practical savvy to help us maximize our potential in this exciting new field,” Hexter said. 

To inform this effort, Koehl plans a period of outreach across the campus to identify faculty and academic programs relevant to the goals of the initiative and to form collaborative partnerships in furtherance of the initiative’s strategic plan.

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Big Data Committee

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