The partners in the Data to Insight Center will include two of the existing Pervasive Technology Labs, two divisions of University Information Technology Services, and the IU Digital Libraries Program:

The Center for Data and Search Informatics, led by Dr. Beth Plale. The Center for Data And Search Informatics creates tools for the discovery, management, and use of digital data. For example, this group is developing tools that enable weather forecasters and atmospheric scientists to select Doppler radar data in real time and predict the path of severe weather such as tornadoes and hurricanes. The group is also developing tools that will help reveal hidden trends in data, essential for applications as diverse as industrial quality control and timely understanding of adverse effects of new medicines. In addition, the Center for Data and Search Informatics is developing tools that allow university and private sector researchers to track data sets, ensuring that a data set created today can be verified, understood, and properly used decades from now.

The Visualization and Interactive Spaces Lab (VISLab), led by Dr. M. Pauline Baker. The VISLab is known nationally for the development of intuitive visual tools for interpreting and understanding data. The decades-old approach to the interactions between humans and computers is to try to train people to act the way computers are programmed to understand. The VISLab turns this around, by creating and programming computer systems that react the way humans intuitively expect. VISLab successes include the PercepTable – a highly intuitive way to interact with computers. Visual displays and development of new ways to use common objects and hand gestures to direct a computer are particularly engaging to young minds that are first learning about the wonders of computers for learning.

The IU Digital Libraries Program, led by Robert McDonald. The Digital Libraries Program specializes in the implementation of systems for long-term curation of and access to digital information created or managed by IU. Since the establishment of the great library of Alexandria, it has been librarians who have developed the field of information science – managing information, cataloging it, and finding it. While the means of storage today are much different than the scrolls used thousands of years ago, the involvement of IU’s leading digital librarians will add distinct competencies and capabilities to the Data to Insight Center in organizing, managing, accessing, and using digital data.

The Infrastructure Division and Research Technologies Division (Systems Group) of University Information Technology Services. These subunits of University Information Technology Services are responsible for the hardware that powers IU’s data storage systems. As in the Digital Science Center, the deep involvement of UITS in the Data to Insight Center will accelerate the delivery of innovations by the Center as widely useable services. Both UITS divisions are deeply involved in storage of data on disk and on tape, using complementary technologies, and together they will add to this Center one of the most advanced storage facilities and some of the most skilled computer storage professionals anywhere in the US.

Turning data into insights is a very particular, new, and challenging aspect of the many uses of cyberinfrastructure. IU is already regarded as a leader in many areas of data-centric science. The Data to Insight Center will link computer scientists developing new tools, librarians who are expert in long term maintenance of data, and information technologists at University Information Technology Services who operate systems capable of storing and manipulating some of the largest data sets in the world. Because the problems of discerning insight from large amounts of data are common to academia and industry, the innovations created and put to practice by the Data to Insight Center will be of tremendous value to academic research and industrial competitiveness in Indiana.