Welcome
The Research Data Lab is a facility designed to empower researchers by providing them with the necessary tools and resources to manage big data. Built on modern cloud technology, the platform provides a central place for researchers to host, explore and analyze large datasets.
The Research Data Lab enables users these benefits when doing data-driven research:
- Big Data Analysis: With the power of parallel processing and distributed architecture, the Data Lab has capacity to analyze large databases (GBs to TBs) in seconds.
- Familiar Software with AI Assistants: No need to learn proprietary tools or software. Extract, explore, and analyze data using familiar programming languages like Python, SQL, and R with an integrated AI assistant to help you write and optimize code.
- Fully Managed Databases: Make queries or join data right away. The Lab provides datasets from various sources available for immediate access. Most databases are engineered to be consistently formatted and regularly updated when new data is released.
- Bring Your Own Data: In addition to fully managed databases, researchers may transfer their personal datasets to the platform for a faster analysis. Once transferred, they have an option to share their datasets with their colleagues.
- Data Governance and Security: Stringent protocols and safeguards are in place to ensure data privacy, compliance, and security.
Platforms
The Data Lab is the combination of various data-driven researching platforms, each with their own strengths and particular use-cases.
Data Dictionaries
While we build this website, our data dictionaries can be found on our old one below:
Testimonials
Curious about the impact of the Darden Research Data Lab? Dive into what researchers have to say about their transformative experiences with our cutting-edge resources and expert guidance.
Dr. Simmi Mookerjee, Prof. of Accounting at Darden School of Business wrote:
“The Data Lab was invaluable in my work with large datasets of firm workforce data. Rohit's team handled every stage, from the download, processing, and organization of massive datasets that my personal computer could not manage. Thanks to their understanding of how I needed the data structured, as well as their efficiency and skill in knowing how to best use resources to make that happen, what would have taken me months was completed in just a few weeks. I highly recommend The Data Lab for anyone needing expert support with complex data projects.”
Dr. Elena Loutskina, Prof. of Finance at Darden Business School wrote:
"The data lab hosts many databases integral to my research including Experian credit bureau data, universal mortgage application (Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, HMDA) data, U.S. quarterly employment and labor statistics data, among others. Hosting this data in the data lab offer three core advantages. First, Data Lab team downloads and checks the original data. This service is invaluable in the world where every new year of data is frequently distributed in flat files that, at times, do not follow the format used in the prior year. By leveraging this service, you can effectively outsource the initial step of data cleaning. Secondly, data is stored in the same format. Once you learn how to access one database, you know how to access all of them. There is no need to download data individually merging and confirming to a usable format. Third, the speed of processing far exceeds anything I can achieve on a personal computer. What used to take me 40 min on my office computer now takes 3 seconds in the Azure Data Lab."
Dr. Sanket Korgaonkar, Prof. of Finance at McIntyre School of Commerce wrote:
“I am an active user of the data lab, where I'm currently analyzing a large panel of household credit data with billions of records. The lab provides a user-friendly interface that enables researchers to write simple programs in SQL, Python, and R to quickly merge and analyze large datasets. The computational complexity that facilitates the rapid analysis and construction of the data is left “under the hood” allowing us to focus on answering the research question at hand. Additionally, the lab has an internal SharePoint website containing comprehensive how-to guides for essential software like Python, SQL, and R, tailored for both Windows and Mac users.”