The National Consortium for Data Science

DataBytes: Calling all Data Scientists...Introducing ROBOKOP
2025-12-10 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | via Zoom
ROBOKOP (Reasoning Over Biomedical Objects linked in Knowledge Oriented Pathways) is a knowledge graph system that aims to accelerate and advance scientific discovery by enabling users to simultaneously explore dozens of integrated and harmonized sources of biomedical knowledge. ROBOKOP has been applied to suggest mechanistic insights into biomedical questions and hypotheses for subsequent testing across multiple domains, including hepatotoxicity, environmental determinants of disease, drug repurposing and mechanism of action, and others.
During this NCDS webinar, Dr. Karamarie Fecho will provide a short presentation and live demonstration of ROBOKOP, followed by an opportunity for attendees to pose questions to ROBOKOP and explore answers.
After this webinar, attendees will:
● Gain a general understanding of knowledge graphs
● Be aware of the ROBOKOP knowledge graph system and know how to access it
● Have a basic understanding of how to query ROBOKOP and interpret results
Funding
ROBOKOP is funded by NIEHS with joint support from the NIH Office of Data Science (#U24ES035214). Drs. Alexander Tropsha and Chris Bizon, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, serve as Principal Investigators.
About Dr. Karamarie Fecho
Dr. Fecho holds a PhD degree in Neurobiology from UNC’s School of Medicine. Her scientific background is broad and spans the clinical and translational spectrum, from basic science to clinical research to healthcare quality assurance/improvement and data science.
Kara currently serves as Founder and CEO of Copperline Professional Solutions, which is a small biomedical consulting company that she founded in 2010. Through Copperline, Kara has engaged with numerous academic organizations, pharmaceutical companies, tech start-ups, and non-profits, providing a wide array of services, products, and expertise.
Kara also is a Research Affiliate at RENCI, where in recent years she has been focused on the development and application of biomedical knowledge graphs. This webinar will focus on her work on the ROBOKOP (Reasoning Over Biomedical Objects linked in Knowledge Oriented Pathways) knowledge graph system.
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LinkedIn Like a Data Scientist: Strategic Networking for the Digital Age
2026-01-27 12:00 - 13:00
We’re delighted to host Becky Brown once again for an updated session exploring LinkedIn best practices. Becky has held multiple positions at SAS during her decades-long career at the software giant. These days, Brown helps sales leaders leverage digital platforms to build stronger connections and more opportunities. Learn her favorite techniques and tricks of the trade.
About Becky Brown
Becky is a trainer and coach for sales teams wanting to leverage digital platforms like LinkedIn and Sales Navigator to build relationships, uncover opportunities, and create fuller pipelines. She manages a Social Selling certification program and runs global communications for the team.
Becky brings a broad set of experiences from 37 years in sales, marketing and enablement in the technology industry. You can find Becky on LinkedIn and volunteering for the sea turtle patrol in her beloved Emerald Isle, NC.

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DataBytes: Breaking the Georeferencing Bottleneck - How AI is Transforming Natural History Collections
2026-02-18 12:00 - 13:00
Large language models (LLMs) offer a transformative solution to one of the most persistent challenges facing natural history collections: converting textual locality data from specimen labels into precise geographical coordinates. Traditional georeferencing methods require substantial expertise, time, and financial resources, constraints that have left millions of specimens in museums and herbaria without spatial data. Our standardized testing demonstrates that contemporary LLMs can achieve near-human accuracy in georeferencing tasks while dramatically reducing both processing time and costs. By integrating LLMs into existing digitization workflows, institutions can accelerate the spatial enablement of their collections, unlocking new research opportunities in biodiversity science, climate change studies, and conservation planning. This approach has immediate practical applications for collection managers while advancing the broader goal of making natural history data more accessible and analytically powerful for the research community.

What to expect:

Performance benchmarks and validation: Understand how LLM accuracy compares to traditional georeferencing methods across different specimen types, locality descriptions, and geographic regions, with concrete metrics from standardized testing.
Scalability and resource optimization: Discover how LLMs can dramatically reduce georeferencing bottlenecks, enabling collections to process thousands of specimens at a fraction of the traditional cost and time investment.
Unlocking collection value: See how accelerated georeferencing opens new avenues for research applications, data mobilization initiatives, and cross-institutional data sharing that were previously limited by spatial data gaps.

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Spring 2026 NCDS Virtual Career Panel
2026-02-26 17:00 - 18:00
Join panelists working in sports analytics, growth equity, and data and AI security as we explore the paths that lead to a career in data science. The journey looks different for everyone, but a dream job is the destination. We’ll discuss a few examples of what it takes to get there. We’ll also dive into the hard and soft skills that turn a top candidate into the perfect candidate for a role in this competitive field.
Panelists:

Leena Dave – Truist | Senior Vice President, Data Governance Metrics and Reporting
Peter Engler – Seattle Seahawks | Seattle Seahawks Football Research Assistant
Namrata Jumani – Radian Capital | Associate
Zixin Nie – RTI International | Data Privacy Specialist

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