About Us

CIDR (Center for Interdisciplinary Data Science Research) was founded in July 2018 by Dr. Yuval Benjamini (Department of Statistics) and Dr. Dafna Shahaf (School of Computer Science and Engineering) as the cornerstone of the Hebrew University’s university-wide initiative to create Israel’s leading data science training and research programs.

CIDR’s members are established experts with a broad range of expertise, ranging from core areas such as machine learning and statistics to application-driven areas such as computational biology and digital humanities. The center is interdisciplinary, collaborating with multiple departments at HUJI including Computer science, Statistics, Brain Sciences, Medicine, Agriculture, Communications and Journalism, Law, Business, Political science, and more. CIDR actively seeks to impact new areas and foster collaboration with researchers (within HUJI or outside) whose primary research revolves around data science.

Our mission

CIDR has a three-part mission, encapsulating the promise of data science:

1. Advance the state-of-the-art of core research in data-science methodology, supporting a vibrant research community.
2. Arm researchers throughout the university with tools to harness the power of data. Advance the dissemination of data-science methodology in scientific research through training programs and project support, transforming all fields and disciplines.
3. Advance data-science collaborations between the Hebrew University, the public sector and industry to benefit the Israeli society.

So far

There are a quite few challenges to the integration of data science across academic research fields. The first is that many data owners are not data scientists; the second is the lack of incentive to switch from existing analysis methods to data-centered methods. Thus, CIDR offers the support necessary to make the leap.

We identified the main stumbling blocks in the shift to data science as lack of computational resources and algorithmic support. To that end, we have developed a data science support pipeline, led by a team of MSc and PhD students, with the goal of teaching – not consulting. See our featured projects page for a (small) sample of the projects we support.

In addition to directly supporting research projects, we also support existing data science classes to make them more accessible to students outside of computer sciences and statistics. CIDR also offers tutorials and data science workshops and bootcamps across research disciplines and at all levels from the very basics through to advanced analyses.