Welcome to the Rice Data Science Conference and welcome to Houston, Texas – the fourth-largest city in the United States and a dynamic epicenter for the discovery and analysis of data. Along with being the energy capital of the world, Houston is also home to the Texas Medical Center and NASA. With such a broad spectrum of heavy industries, coupled with an emerging technology and innovation scene, which are creating demand for an increasingly technical workforce, Houston is quickly becoming an important destination for data-enabled science and engineering.

Rice University, now more than ever before, is focused on enabling and empowering Houston. Rice’s focus on data science as an essential interdisciplinary field is at the forefront of that effort. Since its inception in Summer of 2015, the Rice Data Science Initiative has brought eight new faculty members to Rice. It has led to new programs of research and of engagement.  Rice’s new Data to Knowledge Lab (D2K) is up and running; they are ready to engage with non-profits and industry around data science problems – we encourage you to contact them. This year’s Rice Data Science Conference Committee saw an overwhelming number of abstract submissions, on subjects ranging from the fundamentals of data science to applications that span the spectrum of the Houston and Texas-wide industry ecosystem. The broad set of submissions reflects the importance that the Houston community assigns to the opportunities that they see in this area.

With a growing number of conference attendees, we are excited to bring this conference to Houston. We anticipate that it will become the backbone of the Data Science community not just at Rice University, but across the southern United States. We are also grateful to our sponsors who share our enthusiasm and who seek the opportunity to engage with the community. Sponsor support plays several critical roles in the conference. It helps us keep attendance costs low. It demonstrates to students and others the vibrancy of Houston’s data-science job market. Finally, it shows support for the many distinct technology efforts that are coming together to make the Houston data-science scene.

The Ken Kennedy Institute at Rice University has a long history of working with key industries, serving as a community builder, convener, and facilitator of Houston’s increasingly critical technology workforce. Through this conference, we hope to support student growth in the field of data science, engage further with industry, and foster collaborations with other Houston institutions to build capacity for both research and execution in data-driven endeavors.

This year’s program is designed to spark opportunistic collaboration and networking.  It features seven distinguished plenary speakers, with opportunities to engage them at breaks and meals. The technical program features four parallel tracks designed for those seeking to better understand applications and research:

• Biomedical and Health Care Applications
• Energy Applications
• Methods and Platform Applications
• Urban-Analytics and Social-Media Applications

The program also includes both educational workshops and a student poster session. The program will conclude with a panel on data-driven approaches to understanding human performance that features participants from NASA JSC, KBRwyle, Rice University, TIRR Memorial Hermann and Under Armour. We are excited to have such a breadth of interests on the panel and we look forward to their introspective view on how machine learning, deep learning, data mining and artificial intelligence are impacting and changing their businesses.

On behalf of Rice University, the Data Science Conference Program Committee and our fellow constituents and sponsors, we want to thank you for being here. This conference is not just about data science, it is also about Houston’s place in data science –  a city on the cusp of data science opportunities. It is about having the right people in place at the right time. If ever there was a city rich in data-resources with enough talent to bring forth advancements and solutions, Houston is it. Houston is a place where people and data make a difference.  Houston is where data science becomes real.

Keith D. Cooper              Jan. E. Odegard

2018 Rice Data Science Conference Co-chairs