Ball State Data Mine

$Ball State Data Mine Students Looking at Laptop$

What is Data Mine?

Ball State University, in collaboration with Purdue University, has established the BSU Data Mine to give students real-world experience in solving challenging data-driven problems. The BSU Data Mine partners with corporate and university mentors so that both undergraduate and graduate students can acquire real-world experience in the field of data science. Data Mine is an interdisciplinary learning community that serves the interests of student participants, by providing valuable experience, and the interests of corporate partners, by providing engagement with promising students.

Project Examples

Text Summarization and Feature Extraction

Pacific Life

The goal of this project is to develop an automated system that can efficiently extract important medical features and generate a concise summary from Attending Physician Statements (APS) using natural language processing (NLP) techniques.
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Predicting Remaining Useful Life of Turbofan Engines

Raytheon

The goal of this project is to use health sensor data sets to train predictive models to calculate the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of key system components of military aircraft and land vehicles.
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Predicting Alzheimer's From mRNA Sequences in Blood Samples

Superfluid DX (partner with Purdue and Arizona State) $Data Mine student presenting research$

Training and assessing various predictive models for detecting the presence of Alzheimer’s disease from mRNA biomarkers in blood samples. Students cleaned and managed RNA sequencing data, implemented dimension reduction techniques and addressed collinearity in a high-dimensional explanatory space.
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Using Data Analytics to Set Health Billing Procedures

Elevance Health (partner with Purdue) $Data Mine student presenting research$

Students carried out claims data analytics for early identification of changes in billed procedure codes. When healthcare providers change reimbursement contracts, billed procedure codes may change in an attempt to maximize the provider’s revenue. Early identification helps keep healthcare costs affordable for Elevance Health’s members.
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Sponsoring a Data Mine Project
Student Life in the Data Mine

Sponsoring a Data Mine Project

What do students do in the Data Mine?

In the Fall and Spring semesters, students take a 1-credit hour asynchronous data science computing seminar, offered by Purdue University, to practice working with large data sets on a research computing cluster. Students collaborate with corporate partners to earn 3 additional credits doing data science research and analysis. Corporate cohorts of students will work directly with corporate sponsors to evaluate real data in order to meet real-world business needs.

Why sponsor a Data Mine Project?

Access Talent

Corporate sponsors will work with ambitious, interdisciplinary students for nine months. This compares favorably to a summer internship which typically lasts only ten weeks.

Build Company Recognition

Partnering in a data mine project involves significant community engagement and interaction with a large university community.

Test Proof-of-Concept Projects

You can see what innovative students can create before committing significant resources to a project.

Complete and Add Value to Existing Projects

You will be able to give potentially valuable projects, which are stuck in the backlog, the attention of aspiring data scientists.

What do we need from corporate partners?

Project

Proof-of-concepts or the “art of possible”
Summer internship projects that have been scoped out in greater detail
Non-mission-critical projects–-ones that involve experiential learning

Mentor

People who are ready to engage and make an impact as mentors of ambitious students.

Interested in sponsoring?

Please contact us.

Student Life in the Data Mine

What do you do in the Data Mine?

In Fall and Spring semesters, you will take a 1-credit hour asynchronous data science computing seminar. This seminar, offered by Purdue University, provides an opportunity to work with large data sets on a research computing cluster.

Students will collaborate with corporate partners to earn 3 additional credits, doing data science research and analysis. This cohort will work directly with corporate sponsors to evaluate real data in order to meet real-world business needs. One-credit seminar and corporate collaboration courses can be taken concurrently.

Why should I join the Data Mine?

There are many new and emerging data science career opportunities for all interdisciplinary fields. According to labor market research, the field of data science is expected to grow by over 26% through 2026. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics indicates strong career growth, with a median salary range of over $100,000 per year.

Who can join the Data Mine?

Everyone is welcome. Regardless of your major, data science is crucial for success in a data-driven world. No prior background in data science is required.

Interested in Joining? Fill out an interest form.

Department of Mathematical Sciences

Robert Bell Building (RB)
Muncie, IN 47306

8 a.m. - 5 p.m. M-F

765-285-8640

765-285-1721