KDD Partners With Bloomberg to "Unleash Data: Accelerate Impact"

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Jun 19, 2014) - The Association of Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group for Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (ACM SIGKDD), today announced a partnership with Bloomberg to host the "Unleash Data: Accelerate Impact - KDD at Bloomberg" event on August 24, 2014 in New York. It will be part of the society's annual flagship KDD 2014 conference that will have a special focus on applying data science to improve civic and social outcomes.

"As the amount and availability of digital information increases, our opportunity to bring about real change in the world also increases, but only if we use data science research and technical innovation towards the greater good," said Ankur Teredesai, Ph.D., who serves as the Information Director for ACM SIGKDD.

"Data scientists have a tremendous opportunity to contribute to the most pressing problems faced by policy makers today," said Shawn Edwards, Bloomberg's CTO. "Since the inception of our company, we've shown that data is crucial to making informed decisions, and that it can also have a broader societal impact. We're excited now to help bring together communities that are ideally positioned to help address society's greatest challenges: KDD researchers and practitioners and thought leaders and policy makers from around the world."

Through this Bloomberg sponsored event researchers will be able to engage with practitioners, policy makers and activists engaged in NGOs to explore opportunities to utilize data science in socially relevant application domains like public health, medicine, urbanization and geopolitical disparity. The motivation is to explore how technical innovation around data-driven analytics can demonstrate new opportunities and accelerate solutions to pressing societal issues like climate change or the spread of disease.

"By partnering with Bloomberg for this year's KDD Conference, we have an opportunity to demonstrate how industry and academic research can be used together to generate an environment of active conversation and social impact," said general chair of this year's conference and Chief Scientist at Dstillery, Claudia Perlich. "This August, more than a thousand data scientists will come together in New York City to participate at KDD. With Bloomberg, we will significantly magnify the impact of a common goal: using data to inform decision-making and drive policy change."

The full KDD conference (August 24-27) features four keynotes, 151 research track papers, 44 industry and government track papers, seven invited talks, 12 tutorials and 25 workshops including the KDD CUP challenge. Consistent with the theme, more than 300 teams are currently volunteering their data skills to help NYC based DonorsChoose connecting teachers to donors to provide funding for educational projects in this prestigious competition.

To register, please visit: http://www.kdd.org/kdd2014/registration.html.

About SIGKDD:
ACM SIGKDD which stands for Special Interest Group for Knowledge Discovery from Data is a professional society comprising of world-renowned data scientists from industry and academia. KDD is the annually held, premier international conference that brings together researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry to deep-dive into novel ideas, latest research results, and share in-the-trenches experiences and innovations. More details can be found at kdd.org

About Bloomberg:
Bloomberg, the global business and financial information and news leader, gives influential decision makers a critical edge by connecting them to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas. The company's strength -- delivering data, news and analytics through innovative technology, quickly and accurately -- is at the core of the Bloomberg Professional service, which provides real time financial information to more than 319,000 subscribers globally. Headquartered in New York, Bloomberg employs more than 15,500 people in 192 locations around the world. For more information, visit www.bloomberg.com/now/.