The BigDataX program will host 10 students spending 10 weeks each summer doing research in one of two interdisciplinary laboratories: 1) the DataSys Lab in CS at IIT (5 students) or 2) the Systems Group in the CI/CS at UChicago (5 students). The two labs physically close (4 miles apart), and students will have weekly activities that place all students in a single lab to strengthen the cohort experience. The PIs will aim to recruit most of the students from outside of the host institutions, focusing on recruiting students from institutions without research opportunities as well as women and minorities.

Each 10-week program will begin in the 3rd or 4th week of May aiming to end the program by the end of July or early August. Students will be encouraged to work in teams of two to help reinforce the positive aspects of teamwork, and each team will be assigned both a graduate student and faculty mentor. The BigDataX program will emphasize collaborative research teams in which graduate students are formally involved in the mentoring activities of the REU students. Each REU student will be involved in conducting research as part of a larger group, presenting research results to the entire BigDataX group, and as well as other audiences such as the DataSys lab and Globus Labs. The students will learn to both read research papers, and to write up their research work and results in the format of a conference/journal article. The significant collaboration between the mentors over the past eight years coupled with advanced graduate students working with the mentors at both institutions, will enable REU students to become productive faster on more complex research problems than is typically possible in such a short timeframe. The mentors will work with the students during the summer, and continue working on refining the research output towards publishing the students’ summer work. The mentors will also help students prepare for presentations, and help them with the application process to graduate schools. Students will also be encouraged to continue their work at their respective institutions as part of an undergraduate thesis.

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• Undergraduate student in Mathematics, Data Science, Computer Science, or Engineering at a US institution
• US citizen or permanent resident on or before May 28th, 2024
• Minimum GPA 3.0
• 2 recommendation letters; must be received by March 4th, 2024