At intersection of humans and data, CSE professor finds his place
Arnab Nandi, assistant professor in Ohio State’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, held an impressive array of internships at some of the world’s most powerful technology companies before deciding that academia—and Ohio State specifically—had what he wanted most: the freedom to conduct his own research. “In academia, you can be more ambitious,” he says. “You can focus on research projects that would be hard to justify in short-term timeframes, but could yield phenomenal outcomes.”
One experiment—a collaboration with the University Libraries, the Advanced Computing Center for Arts and Design, and the Department of Theatre—explored back-and-forth exchanges between data and users with an interactive animation of a tree projected on a wall in Thompson Library. Seemingly a piece of art in itself, the tree’s branches “grew” based on data from the University Libraries’ online journal readership; the number of humanities journal accesses, for example, dictated the animation of one branch, while retrievals of engineering publications controlled another. Passersby delved further into the data that was represented through arm gestures.
It is the type of project that fascinates Nandi, as well as the many users who interacted with it. “Users of our system were people just walking by,” Nandi says. “We wanted them to be engaged—to just show up and say, ‘This is interesting and I’m going to wave my arms and see what’s going on.’ We are looking at what I would envision the future looks like. You will have pervasive views of data in everything around you.”
In some ways, the future is already here.
“People don’t realize they use databases on a daily basis,” says Nandi. “When you use an iPhone, you’re using multiple databases. The same goes for Facebook, or BuckeyeLink on campus. When people look at data and worry why it’s slow or hard to access, these are real challenges.”
Nandi makes his findings available to scientific, consumer and business communities through open source channels, and some of his work will show up soon in products. He continues to have strong connections with industry and is grateful for their support—including a cluster of machines donated from Yahoo!, access to Amazon’s cloud computing infrastructure, a faculty award from Google Research and more. Indeed, he hopes to strengthen industry relationships as more Ohio State students and faculty involved with data analytics take jobs with top companies.
To further the culture of technology at Ohio State, Nandi serves as co-director for the university’s Hackathon program, along with Meris Mandernach of University Libraries. At the most recent one, a 36-hour “OHI/O” Hackathon in October 2014, over 200 undergraduate and graduate student programmers took part in building software and demonstrating it for a live audience of students, faculty and representatives from technology companies. Winners were awarded over $5,000 in prizes. (Check out NBC4i’s coverage of the event here: http://go.osu.edu/263) “This has become a revolution of sorts,” Nandi says. “I didn’t expect the hackathons to have such a profound impact on student learning, but we’re noticing a burst of new energy. The students are now even creating their own hackathon clubs.”
Increasing student engagement with technology is an important component of the university’s unprecedented investment in translational data analytics through the Discovery Themes.
“We want to build the kind of culture here at Ohio State where students think this is exciting,” says Nandi, “where building things and making things are championed.”
by Alice Duncanson (Gifted Communications) for Discovery Themes
