The UHM DESCARTES traineeship model is a novel attempt to incorporate convergent research and a interdisciplinary focus to data science and AI. Timely, grand problems that cut across multiple areas (decarbonization, healthcare, and communications) seed challenges and collaborations that can be tackled with data science working synergistically with domain expertise.

Student cohorts come in with different perspectives on these problems, be they in engineering, computer science, economics, business, medicine or other concentrations. A systematic collaboration model among faculty, combined with our novel module-based courses that tailors instruction to students allows us to synergistically use the different perspectives for a truly interdisciplinary experience, both in research and teaching.