Dalhousie University | Digital Industries

Key facilities

The Institute for Big Data Analytics develops targeted algorithms for the analysis of data sets in diverse areas including oceans, text mining, and bioinformatics, with an extensive range of industry and government partners.

Graphics and Experiential Media (GEM) lab performs research in human-computer interaction, working predominantly in spatial, mobile interactive experiences and off-the-desktop visual interfaces. Their work has been deployed in many industrial, educational, and artistic settings.

Major collaborations

MERIDIAN is a CFI Cyberinfrastructure project to develop world-class infrastructure to support ocean data science, with a particular focus on acoustic and ship-tracking data. MERIDIAN works with partners such as JASCO to develop new visualization tools, as well as implementing data-discovery services and machine-learning tools that operate on large data sets.

DeepSense is a multi-million-dollar computational platform funded by the Province of Nova Scotia, IBM, and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, which supports industry-led research in the ocean data analytics sector. The DeepSense platform accelerates research by providing significant computing resources and a cadre of highly qualified personnel with expertise in machine learning and other disciplines.

Researchers

Dr Stan Matwin, CRC Tier 1 in Visual Text Analytics. Dr Matwin is a global leader in the area of big-data analytics who develops techniques to handle large data sets in diverse areas of application, with a particular focus on the ocean. His research program also encompasses crucial questions of privacy.

Dr Rita Orji, Top 150 Women in Canadian STEM. Dr Orji’s research focuses on persuasive technologies, and how different personality types respond to different persuasive strategies. Her work has been applied in areas including binge drinking and healthcare.

Dr. Fernando Paulovich, CRC Tier 2 in Data Visualization. Dr Paulovich marshals a range of techniques in machine learning and data science to support user interaction with large data sets. His work is being applied in areas such as manufacturing.

Special programs and work integrated learning initiatives

Dalhousie’s strategic research direction is grounded in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030, and features signature research clusters and two cross-cutting themes, one of which is Big Data. (SDGs 4, 8, 9, 12, 16, 17.
ShiftKey Labs. Dalhousie’s first Innovation and Entrepreneurship Sandbox, ShiftKey Labs is dedicated to supporting innovation in computer science by providing workshops, hackathons, networking events, and space.
Co-op / Entrepreneurship Internships. The undergraduate and Master’s of Applied Computer Science degrees include a structured co-op program whereby students spend one or more terms with companies.

University-industry research partnerships