Some of science’s most difficult challenges like solving world hunger and curing disease involve more than just traditional science fields such as plant and cell biology. Data science brings together computational, statistical, and mathematical techniques to expand our knowledge from big datasets collected from the bench, field or computer. Handling these large datasets can pose a challenge, especially to researchers who might not be familiar with or have the infrastructure to handle big data. Nirav Merchant is the co-principal investigator for CyVerse and Director of the UArizona Data Science Institute. Nirav is an expert in developing computational platforms and enabling technologies towards improving research productivity and collaboration for interdisciplinary teams and virtual organizations.