Young Scholars Program

In January of 2020, the USDA awarded a $1 million grant to the University of Virginia’s Biocomplexity Institute to lead the development of a three-state Coordinated Innovation Network and expand the Institute’s highly successful Data Science for the Public Good program beyond the Commonwealth of Virginia for the first time.

The three-state Coordinated Innovation Network includes five public universities across three states: Oregon State University, Iowa State University, Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, and Virginia State University, each with its own tailored yet similar DSPG Young Scholars program.

The expected outcomes from the Three-State Coalition initiative include:

• Promoting economic mobility through use of data science
• Utilizing evidence-based decision-making capacity
• Bringing data science to rural areas with a scalable, and repeatable process
• Developing new datasets and information resources for use by communities and researchers
• Empowering public services and local organizations to develop and share data to the benefit of all
• Developing programs that serve as an incubator to promote workforce development
• Opening of entrepreneurial space for the development of new products, processes, and tools based on local community data
• Boosting the quality of life, and efficient and equitable delivery of services in their communities