Faculty & Research

Pushing the frontiers of knowledge

A new research computing capability at Kellogg will help faculty and students get a handle on the expanding universe of information

By Rebecca Lindell

The information explosion has been a blessing for researchers — and a curse.

Vast amounts of data on virtually every subject imaginable are now available, allowing researchers to entertain questions that just 10 years ago they could not possibly have addressed.

Movements in the stock market, the behavior of networks and the constantly evolving Wikipedia database can now be studied in greater depth and detail than ever before. It’s a feast of information for researchers — until they try to narrow it down into manageable portions. To do that, they need help.

“There’s so much data available in some areas that rendering them tractable for research can be extremely challenging,” observes David Austen-Smith, senior associate dean for faculty and research. “Solving this problem requires specialized skills and experience.”

Up until now, many faculty members have had to devote their own research time or that of doctoral students to narrowing down the expanding universe of information. But that scenario is likely to change, as Austen-Smith’s idea to create a state-of-the-art “data center” at Kellogg gains traction.

“As with all such things, there are people working on this,” Austen-Smith says. “Our goal is to build a capability at Kellogg for solving these problems.”

That apparatus will include hardware and software capable of culling vast amounts of data, as well as the human expertise necessary to manage both. This will provide Kellogg researchers with the help and tools they need to “pick off” subsets of data, “in one place we can manage and maintain,” Austen-Smith says.

The Kellogg Data Center is among the many initiatives at Kellogg that could be supported by continued generosity. Austen-Smith notes that it is “the perfect kind of project for donors who want to see their money in action.”

“This is a real investment across departments at Kellogg,” he says. “It’s going to facilitate research by both faculty and students on huge amounts of data — and make that information user-friendly and analytically tractable. It will help with faculty recruiting, and spawn questions that we previously couldn’t answer. And it will make Kellogg an even more welcoming place for faculty who aspire to push the frontiers of knowledge.”