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
Data Mine Program

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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Ball State Data Mine Presentation

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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Sponsoring a Data Mine Project
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.