Building the Data Science Profession in Europe: Selected Projects.

“500,000 data scientists needed in European open research data”
(source EU )

I have compiled some information on current projects funded by the European Union (EU) to foster Data Science as a profession in Europe (updated February 6, 2017)

Among them the EDISON, EDSA, and BDVe projects; and the EuADS association.

The European Data Science Academy (EDSA) designs curricula for data science training and data science education across the European Union (EU). EDSA establishes a virtuous learning production cycle whereby we: a) analyse the required sector specific skillsets for data scientists across the main industrial sectors in Europe; b) develop modular and adaptable data science curricula to meet industry expectations; and c) deliver data science training supported by multi-platform and multilingual learning resources. The curricula and learning resources are continuously evaluated by pedagogical and data science experts during both development and deployment.

The European Association for Data Science (EuADS) aims to provide a setting for fostering communication and cooperation among all stakeholders of data science. It is a forum for research, scientific conduct, promoting transparent access to data, policy making as well as support of young scientists. Scientifically, the Association promotes the development of models, methods and instruments of data science and provides a unique environment for the presentation and discussion of new methods and models in this field. With regard to networking, it aims to bring together stakeholders and decision-makers in this field to address the challenges of data science in the 21st century.

The EU-funded EDISON Project is putting in place foundation mechanisms that will speed-up the increase in the number of competent and qualified Data Scientists across Europe and beyond. The EDISON initiative is doing this through various measures aimed at reducing the gap between the supply side of educators and trainers and the demand side of employers. The EDISON Data Science Framework (EDSF) is based around a group of tightly related documents namely the Competence Framework, the Body of Knowledge and the Model Curriculum; the various processes that exist to keep the information within these documents fresh and relevant are almost equally as important.

The Big Data Value Association AISBL (BDVA) is a fully self-financed non–for-profit organisation under Belgian law. The Big Data Value Association (BDVA) is the private counterpart to the EU Commission to implement the BDV PPP programme (Big Data Value PPP). BDVA has over 150 members all over Europe with a well-balanced composition of large and small and medium-sized industries as well as research organisations. BDVA is open to new members to further enrich the data value ecosystem and play an active role. These include Data Users, Data Providers, Data Technology Providers and Researchers.
The objectives of the Association are to boost European Big Data Value research, development and innovation and to foster a positive perception of Big Data Value.

LINKS
– EuADS
– EDSA
– EDISON
– BDVA

Resources

Survey of the EDISON project: Help the EDISON project in defining the DATA SCIENTIST Profession.

Details and instructions can be found at here.

Research Infrastructure

There is also this European project Sobigdata.eu (Social Mining & Big Data ecosystem). It is a Research Infrastructure offering to researchers, scientist and innovators a trusted ecosystem where social mining methods, bigdata analytics competences and datasets may be accessed and shared to the aim of creating experiment for understanding behaviours and phenomena at societal level.   
SoBigData first experimental settings are the 4 exploratories: “Societal Debate” where the polarization of opinions on social media is studied, “CityOfCitizens” where understanding human and citizens participation are the basic breaks to build the cities of the future, “Migration“, where the potential contribution of Big Data to understand migration related phenomena are studies and “Well-being and economic performance”. 
The project is strongly involved in training initiatives towards Phd, Master and also High School student to the aim of spreading data literaci at all level of school, with a particular attention to attract women to data science. 
Coordination of the project is at CNR in Pisa in collaboration with University of Pisa.

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