nsf.gov - National Science Foundation (NSF) News - NSF advances national efforts enabling data-driven discovery - US National Science Foundation (NSF)

National Science Foundation (NSF) officials today are spotlighting the development and implementation of novel, multi-stakeholder partnerships that promise progress in big data discovery, education and innovation at a White House-sponsored event, Data to Knowledge to Action, in Washington, D.C. The event follows last year's launch of the Administration's National Big Data R&D Initiative that has recorded significant progress and accomplishments since being introduced in March 2012. A leader in the initiative, NSF has made significant investments to advance big data--the collection and analysis of extremely large datasets--by developing foundational techniques and technologies, building infrastructure, and nurturing research and education communities. In addition, NSF has supported a broad range of research activities, including projects to extract value from large, complex data sets such as cancer genome data; to approximate how the human brain processes language to improve computer search engines and understanding of our own brain's activity and to build data storage systems that retrieve information 200 times faster than current systems. One NSF-funded research group at the University of California, Berkeley has already attracted the likes of Yahoo! and Twitter and has fueled an array of new start-ups ... What follows is an update on NSF's activities ..."