UVA School of Data Science Presents Datapalooza 2025

We are data scientists, analysts, and engineers. Leaders, creators, and explorers. Collaborators, innovators, and problem solvers.The University of Virginia School of Data Science—the first of its kind in the nation—is guided by common goals: to further discovery, share knowledge, and make a positive impact on society through collaborative, open, and responsible data science research and education. Founded in fall 2019 through the largest gift in UVA history, the School positions the university and our community to play a national and international leadership role in the global digital future.

UVA School of Data Science

Explore AI, data, and truth at Datapalooza 2025—UVA’s fall showcase of data science in action across fields and for the public good.

1919 Ivy Rd

The UVA School of Data Science presents Datapalooza 2025: Truth and Accountability in the Age of AI, our signature fall event bringing together faculty, students, alumni, and partners to showcase data science in action—across disciplines and for the public good. This year’s afternoon programming features innovative research at intersections like Data and Design, Data and the Physical World, Data and Health, Data and Algorithms, Data and Culture, and Data and National Security.This year's keynote speaker is Danielle Citron, Distinguished Professor in Law at the University of Virginia, and an expert on information privacy, free expression, and civil rights law.<ul><li>Lunch is available on a first-come, first-served basis.</li><li>Only events in the Capital One Hub will be livestreamed.</li><li>If you need accommodations, please let us know during registration.</li><li>Free parking is available in the JPJ West Lot with shuttle service on the Gold Line.</li></ul>

Agenda

Graduate School Resume Reviews

Professional Headshots

Data Science Building Tours

Registration and Casual Networking Lunch

Analyze how America’s growing network of data centers impacts energy, water, land, and communities. Join UVA and LMI to learn about the Data-to-Impact Challenge, "Innovate for Good, Empower with Data," and create data-driven tools that inform smarter decisions.

UVA-LMI Data-to-Impact Challenge Kick-off

Welcome Address

Design is more than aesthetics — it’s a way of thinking, prototyping, and solving problems with empathy and precision. This session explores how data and design inform one another across digital humanities and “critical making,” human-centered interfaces and algorithmic transparency, ubiquitous sensing and health-oriented AI, and fluent human–robot collaboration with intention-aware systems. We’ll consider how visual communication, creative toolmaking, and responsible deployment practices—spanning storytelling, interpretability, and real-world constraints—shape how people understand, trust, and act on data.

Breakout Session: Data and Design

Data is a powerful asset in defending and advancing national interests, yet it also introduces complex risks. This session brings together experts in intelligence, defense, and policy to examine how data science underpins security — from cybersecurity and supply-chain resilience to energy independence and information integrity. The discussion will explore how data-driven decision tools can enhance preparedness and accountability while safeguarding privacy and democratic values.

Breakout Session: Data and National Security

Data connects the physical and digital worlds—from sensors on bridges to models that predict climate, materials, and motion. This session looks at how image-based monitoring and digital twins inform infrastructure resilience; how machine spatial intelligence links geospatial mapping with 3D scene understanding; how active-learning and simulation accelerate materials discovery; and how perception-driven systems close the loop between measurement, modeling, and real-world action. Through case studies in structural health, geospatial analytics, robotics, and materials informatics, we’ll explore how data science helps us see the world differently—and design more resilient futures. 

Breakout Session: Data and the Physical World

Break

Health data can transform care, diagnostics, and policy — while raising urgent questions about equity, consent, and bias. This session explores how multimodal data such as EHRs, imaging, wearables, and -omics powers predictive models, patient-specific digital twins, and decision support in real clinical workflows. We’ll examine rigorous methods for causal and spatial inference, privacy-preserving and federated analysis, and bias auditing, alongside reproducible pipelines and open, FAIR practices that build trust. Case studies span population health and precision medicine, from risk stratification to epigenomic profiling, showing how responsible AI and robust data governance can support healthier communities without compromising dignity or autonomy.

Breakout Session: Data and Health

Algorithms are the engines that turn data into insight — but their assumptions, geometries, and uncertainties shape what we treat as “truth.” This session explores principled algorithm design across robust Bayesian modeling and information-assisted inference, as well as geometric and manifold-aware methods that respect data structure. It also examines network and higher-order models for contagion and collective behavior and multimodal graphical approaches that fuse imaging, signals, and text for sensitive domains like mental health. Presenters will discuss how inductive bias, transparency, and uncertainty quantification affect downstream decisions — and how to build systems that are not only powerful, but also reproducible, accountable, and humane. 

Breakout Session: Data and Algorithms

Culture shapes how data is created, interpreted, and used — and data, in turn, reshapes culture itself. This session explores how data storytelling, digital humanities, and social analytics reveal the human dimensions of technology. From bias in training datasets to creative practices that blend art and algorithm, panelists will consider how cultural insight can bring accountability, diversity, and meaning to the data-driven world.

Breakout Session: Data and Culture 

In a world where artificial intelligence shapes what we see, share, and believe, truth itself is under strain. Danielle Citron, one of the nation’s foremost voices on privacy, technology, and civil rights, explores what accountability looks like in the age of AI. Drawing from her groundbreaking research on intimate privacy, deepfakes, and online harm, Citron will examine how data-driven systems can amplify inequality, distort public trust, and challenge the rule of law — and how we might reclaim agency, dignity, and transparency in digital life.

Keynote: Digital Authoritarianism

Brie Gertler, interim executive vice president and provost, will give closing remarks and discuss the future of AI at the University of Virginia.