Mission

BD3-REAP aims to strengthen knowledge and research skills for a diverse population of underserved students while preparing them for advanced education and careers in the increasingly technical and competitive field of Big Data science.

Goals

• The primary aim of the project is to provide underrepresented students with in-depth, guided, research-based and hands-on experiences in the emerging field of Big Data science (BDs) while incorporating BDs career advising and graduate pathways seminars to help narrow the achievement gap for underrepresented students.
• Develop and implement a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional program to integrate BDs research and education into CSUF curricula across two colleges (CSUF & USC) and three departments (Mathematics, Biology & Health Science). Prepare underrepresented students to participate and continue research and education in BDs, contributing to closing the gap in underrepresented students in bioscience and the BDs workforce.
• Provide in-depth faculty guided research experience for underrepresented undergraduate CSUF students which incorporate (a) intellectual practices via student-driven hypotheses and research; (b) learning communities via faculty/student interactions, creation of a 2-year cohort experience, and student/peer interactions, critiques and reviews of their respective projects; (c) collaborative assignments via oral or poster preparation and presentations; (d) research-based learning on BDs; and (e) diversity and global learning through partnership with USC as well as linkages with other Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Centers of Excellence.
• Engage diverse students in participation in BDs research and subsequent BDs careers and graduate school experiences.

Supported by a grant from the NIH- NIMHHD #1R25MD010397-01