The Academic Data Science Alliance is a membership network of data science-focused institutions and individuals fiscally sponsored by Community Initiatives. The Alliance grew out of the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environments, a smaller program of the same nature founded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. ¹

Background

The Academic Data Science Alliance originated with the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environments, a partnership between New York University; University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Washington, as well as two foundations from which the partnership got its name: the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. As part of the partnership, the two foundations gave the three universities a cross-institutional grant of $37.8 million over a period of five years to fund “Data Science Environments,” programs that aimed to develop new tools to make use of the large amounts of data yielded by ongoing technical advances. ¹

Later, the Academic Data Science Alliance was founded by data scientist Micaela Parker, formerly an employee of the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environments, as a fiscally sponsored independent project of Community Initiatives, a left-of-center organization based in Oakland, California that subsidizes the administrative expenses of aligned organizations. As of 2023, it has expanded its membership from the original three core universities of the Moore-Sloan program to include dozens of similar institutes and initiatives at major universities in the United States and abroad. ^{1 2 3}

Activities

Aside from providing financial support to its member organizations, the Academic Data Science Alliance also hosts events, facilitates working groups, and publishes material by and for members related to data science developments and practices. ^{4 5}

Member Organizations

Membership in the Academic Data Science Alliance is divided into four tiers: evergreen, institution, research lab/small research institute, and individual. Notable organizations belonging to the first two categories include university programs such as Boston University’s Faculty of Computing and Data Science, the University of Chicago’s Data Science Institute, Harvard University’s Data Science Initiative, Brown University’s Data Science Institute, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Data Driven Discovery Initiative. ²

Funding

Funding Support for the Academic Data Science Alliance comes from dues paid by members, mostly university-based data science programs, and organizations such as the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Gordan and Betty Moore Foundation, and National Science Foundation. ^{3 2}

Leadership

Micaela Parker is the founder and executive director of the Academic Data Science Alliance as well as a research scholar with the Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship. Previously, Parker worked at the alliance’s predecessor organization, the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environments, was an executive director for the University of Washington’s eScience Institute, and a manger with that same university’s Center for Human Health and Ocean Studies. ³

Megan Atkinson is a program associate of the Academic Data Science Alliance. Previously, she worked for the National Academies’ Keck Futures Initiative. ³

Stella Min is a program manager for the Academic Data Science Alliance. Previously, she was a data scientist for IBM Watson Health’s Life Science team. ³

Steve Van Tuyl is a program manager for the Academic Data Science Alliance. Previously, he worked various librarian roles at Oregon State University and Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a researcher with the U.S. Forest Service. ³

1. “MSDSE Archive.” Academic Data Science Alliance. 2019. Accessed June 10, 2024. https://academicdatascience.org/resources/msdse-archive/.
2. “Academic Data Science Alliance: Member Book 2023-2024.” Zenoob: Academic Data Science Alliance. April 18, 2024. Accessed June 10, 2024. https://zenodo.org/records/10992511.
3. “About Us.” Academic Data Science Alliance. Accessed June 10, 2024. https://academicdatascience.org/data-science/about/.
4. “Resources & Publications.” Academic Data Science Alliance. Accessed June 10, 2024. https://academicdatascience.org/resources/.
5. “Projects and Working Groups.” Academic Data Science Alliance. Accessed June 10, 2024. https://academicdatascience.org/projects-working-groups/.