CDSI announces 2023 Convergent Research Themes awards

Five multidisciplinary teams to collaborate on computational approaches to complex problems

The McGill Computational and Data Systems Initiative (CDSI) has announced the first set of awards in its Convergent Research Themes (CRT) program, a new funding scheme to support emerging collaborations between McGill researchers focused on bringing data-driven methods and computational technologies to bear on challenging problems. This year’s selected projects will explore research questions in five areas: extreme weather events, clinical care, cancer treatment, consumer behavior and safety in high-risk environments.

“Computational and data systems techniques will be absolutely crucial to developing solutions to many of today’s most urgent problems, from climate change to health care,” said Eric Kolaczyk, Director of the CDSI and a Professor in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics. “This program invites researchers from across McGill to team up to pursue novel approaches to big questions. We were pleased to receive so many excellent proposals from the McGill community, and we’re looking forward to seeing where these collaborations lead.”

The projects bring together McGill researchers from 15 departments across four faculties and are organized into two stages, Phase 1 themes, for teams focused on building a well-defined proof of concept, and Exploratory themes, for teams in the initial stages of inquiry.

To see the full list of selected projects and to learn more about other CDSI initiatives, including free data training workshops open to all McGill University students, faculty and staff, visit the CDSI website.