The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) has announced plans to hold a workshop on its Gaithersburg, MD, campus next week — Wednesday and Thursday, June 13 and 14 — exploring “key national priority topics” in support of the Federal government’s recently-announced Big Data R&D Initiative. The BIG DATA Workshop is free and open to all, but attendees must pre-register online by this Wednesday, June 6th in order to clear security.

According to NIST/ITL (following the link):

In the March 2012 unveiling of the BIG DATA Initiative, Dr. John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, indicated that this new initiative promises to transform our ability to use BIG DATA for scientific discovery, environmental and biomedical research, education, and national security.

 

In response, NIST, in collaboration with the NSF Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research (CHMPR) is convening a BIG DATA workshop, aimed at exploring:

 

• State-of-the-art core technologies needed to collect, store, preserve, manage, analyze, and share BIG DATA that could benefit from standardization

• Potential measurements to ensure the accuracy and robustness of methods that harness these technologies

 

In this first workshop, key national priority topics will be explored, including examples from science, health, disaster management, security, and finance. At the same time, topics in emerging technology areas, including analytics and architectures will also be discussed.

A preliminary agenda for the workshop — comprising a mix of sessions, panels, and posters — is available.

To learn more, and to register to attend by this Wednesday, June 6th, check out the workshop website.

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)