• Florida A&M University this week received a grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct research on adaptive distributive learning methods 
• The project aims to use distributed learning technology to connect 11 higher education facilities to establish a recruiting and education pipeline by 2025 
• The project involves collaboration between three HBCU schools, as well as Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the University of North Texas 
• Students taking part in the research will also be offered 10 courses to aid in research understanding and a two-week summer research workshop

Florida A&M University (FAMU) was awarded $320,000 this week by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of a collaborative research project that aims to improve undergraduate data science education using adaptive distributed learning methods.

The proposed initiative seeks to utilize distributed learning technologies to pool resources from 11 universities and build a pipeline of data science mini-bachelor certificates, minors, and majors by June 2025.

The project involves faculty and students at three other Historically Black Colleges and Universities, as well as Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the University of North Texas

“The research project has a significant impact on our data science program at FAMU and broadens the participation of underrepresented minority students in STEM disciples,” Clement G. Yedjou, who is leading the project, said. “Student participants will learn different aspects of scientific investigation by interacting with the faculty mentors and earn scientific knowledge that will increase their understanding of basic research by using artificial intelligence and machine learning applications to solve real-life problems.”

Varying project goals include the development of decentralized infrastructure for long-term inter-institution collaboration and the application of data-driven competence-based learning evaluation to discover effective dispersed learning approaches.

Furthermore, FAMU will create a data hub and artificial intelligence-augmented learning systems with courseware for data science in order to transfer the distributed learning standard and technologies from the US Department of Defense’s Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative to personalized learning setting like schools and universities.

“The College of Science and Technology is at the helm of providing new collaborative and distributed, interactive learning environments.  Today’s workforce requires this as the cyber and data-enabled sciences are the foundation for our advancing digital professions, for example, in the high-demand cybersecurity field, etc,” said FAMU College of Science and Technology Dean Richard Alo.  “Data Science, with its impact on every discipline, is fundamental for all our students’ education.  Moreover, his data science focus on the biology domain provides our students with a foundation to study the emerging new frontiers in biology.”

The research will also provide 10 courses to the coalition’s students and a two-week summer research workshop to the selected students with faculty representation. The two-week workshop focuses on the analysis of data generated during the academic year in network data science courses. Each student participant will additionally receive a stipend of $1,750.