Learning by Doing: About the Program

Our Data Science for the Public Good (DSPG) Young Scholars program is a summer immersive program for undergraduate and graduate students from across the country. The program brings together and engages students on research projects that address state, federal, and local government challenges around critical social issues relevant in the world today.

DSPG young scholars conduct research at the intersection of statistics, computation, and the social sciences to determine how information generated within every community can be leveraged to improve quality of life and inform public policy. Undergraduate interns and graduate fellows work in collaborative teams with postdoctoral associates and research faculty from the Social and Decision Analytics division, and project stakeholders.

Young scholar research teams come from diverse academic backgrounds. They combine disciplines including statistics, data science, and the social and behavioral sciences to address complex problems proposed by local, state, and federal agencies. Students work on multiple projects of their choice and interact with other young scholars, Institute faculty and staff, and sponsors.
 

I’ve had many class discussions about how algorithms themselves can generate bias through improper design or use of unrepresentative data. Discussing the potential for bias and actually mitigating it in practice are two very different tasks. Working on this project helped me understand the ways that technology perpetuates injustice and gave me some tools for creating equitable tech in the future.

The program runs for 10 weeks for undergraduate interns and 11 weeks for graduate fellows in the summer, typically May to August.