The Data Collaborations Lab (dataCoLAB) at Carnegie Mellon University Libraries connects the research community across disciplinary borders, and facilitates collaborations between data producers and data scientists. The program connects researchers who want more from their datasets with individuals who have data and computer science skills, creating opportunities for people with different technical and disciplinary backgrounds to work together. The ultimate goal of the dataCoLAB program is to help build a strong community and a healthy data ecosystem.
Anyone from the CMU or Pittsburgh community can participate. Perhaps you have an existing dataset and want help analyzing, organizing, or visualizing it. Or maybe you have data science skills and want to gain experience consulting on interesting real-world data problems. Learn more about whether dataCoLAB is for you!
Information professionals from the CMU University Libraries will help participants connect with collaborators and get started. Participants get support on research data management, project documentation, and other research methodologies. Your library support will help you find and use tools for collaborating and documenting your project, and provide guidance on best practices for making your project publically available and citable.
Spotlight on dataCoLAB
In Fall 2020, dataCoLAB interviewed Amit Verma and Mike Simko about their experience working with dataCoLAB.
The project discussed in the video was inspired by a rapidly developing trend of informatics in materials science, and explores the application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools to develop a knowledge base for high temperature materials. The researchers are building this database by using text mining and NLP tools to extract data from journal articles and open source documents accessed through Carnegie Mellon's University Libraries.
Past Events
Open House
October 29, 2020 - 1:00-3:00pm
On October 28, dataCoLAB will host a virtual open house from 1:00pm to 3:00pm. Please join us to learn about the program and the collaborations that were supported by dataCoLAB this year. The format will emphasize interactivity and Q&A! If you are interested in finding potential collaborators, or building some consulting experience, stop by the open house and chat with others who share the same interests. Register here!
Data Collaborations Lab Office Hours
Office hours occur every Wednesday at 1-3 PM online, hosted jointly with the CMU Libraries Data Office.
We offer help to everyone in the CMU and Pittsburgh community at all levels of learning data and programming. If you are a beginner and trying to learn, we can help you get started on the command line, GitHub, Python or R programming, get an introduction to the wide array of data visualization, GIS, text analysis, and data mining research methods. If you are struggling with a data analysis project, we can help you to troubleshoot and connect you with an external consultant with the right expertise. If you have data or programming expertise and would like to volunteer as a consultant to get experience, help others to learn, or work on real-world data, we can also match you up.
To get in touch, email dataCoLAB@andrew.cmu.edu, join our Slack channel at cmu-data-office-hours.slack.com, or sign up to get help with your data analysis or