Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute funds more faculty and student projects

a group of head shots
Faculty awarded include (clockwise from left) McRoy, Nosonovsky, Rahman, Shi and Zhao

The Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute (NMDSI) has recently awarded more than $700,000 in grants through three annual programs that aim to foster cross-institution collaboration in data science research and education.

The goal of the NMDSI, a partnership between UWM, Marquette University and Northwestern Mutual, is to establish Wisconsin as a recognized national hub for data science and technology. Building on nearly $40 million invested since its inception in 2018, the three institutions will commit $35 million to the institute over the next five years.

Seven of the 29 total awards were given to students and faculty at the college. Awardees in each program include:

Paving ROADS Seed Fund Program aims to support new research partnerships across disciplines and strengthen cross-campus research opportunities. 

Tom Shi, assistant professor, civil and environmental engineering
“Enhancing Rural Connectivity in Wisconsin: A Data Science and AI-based Framework for Connected On-demand Public Transit.”

Mohammad Habib Rahman, Richard and Joanne Grigg Professor, mechanical engineering
“Development of AI-driven Dynamically Adaptive Serious Games for Enhancing Home-based Robot-assisted Therapy.”
Collaborators: Sheikh Lqbal Ahamed (Marquette) and Inga Wang (UWM)

Michael Nosonovsky, professor, mechanical engineering
“Tribo-informatics: Societal Impact of integrating Data Science and Machine Learning methods with surface engineering.”

Tian Zhao, associate professor, computer science, is a collaborator on Lei Fan’s (Marquette) project, “Physics-informed and Machine Learning-accelerated Digital Twin Risk Prediction for Left Ventricular Assist Device.”

Pioneer Collaborative Curricula Program seeks to introduce and embed emerging areas of data science into the curricula of UWM and Marquette University.

Mohammad Habib Rahman, Richard and Joanne Grigg Professor, mechanical engineering
“AI for Rehabilitation Robotics.”
Collaborators: Susan McRoy, professor, computer science; Inga Wang; and Linnea Laestadius (all UWM)

Student Research Scholars Program seeks to engage students from our partner institutions in data science research, working with affiliated faculty and data science experts across disciplines.

Anirudha Subratta Mitra, master’s student, data science
Faculty Mentor:  Nathaniel Stern, professor, mechanical engineering
“Learning the Hallucination Effect: Leveraging Machine Learning Algorithms for Novelty Generation.”

Tanvir Ahmed, PhD candidate, biomedical engineering
Faculty Mentor: Mohammad Habib Rahman, Richard and Joanne Grigg Professor, mechanical engineering
“Developing a Multilingual Hybrid RAG-GPT Chatbot for Personalized Therapy.”

Masoud Khani, PhD candidate, health informatics
Faculty Mentor: Jake Luo, associate professor, health care informatics (affiliated faculty)
“User-Centered Explainable AI Panel for Patients.”