The University of Washington eScience Institute, in collaboration with the Cascadia Urban Analytics Cooperative, is excited to announce the 2018 Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) summer program. The program brings together data and domain scientists to work on focused, collaborative projects that are designed to impact public policy for societal benefit. Sixteen DSSG Student Fellows will be selected to work with academic researchers, data scientists, and public stakeholder groups on data-intensive research projects.

This year’s projects will aim to extract and understand valuable, actionable information from data in urban topic areas such as: public health, sustainable urban planning, crime prevention, education, transportation, and social justice. Click for summaries of projects from the Summer 2015, Summer 2016 and Summer 2017 DSSG programs.

Who: Graduate students and advanced (junior/senior) undergraduate students are invited to apply. Spring graduates are eligible for this program. Students who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents are eligible to apply as long as their visa status allows them to work in U.S. We cannot sponsor student visas for this program.

What: Each student will be part of a team working full-time on a research project that has concrete relevance and impact. Students are expected to work closely and collaboratively with team members onsite for the duration of the 10-week program. Projects will involve analysis and visualization of data on topics such as public health, sustainable urban planning, environmental protection, disaster response, crime prevention, education, transportation, governance, commerce, and social justice. Projects involve a range of stakeholders, including government officials, academic researchers, non-profit organizations, and the general public.

Where: Most work will be conducted on the UW campus in the WRF Data Science Studio, but some field excursions in the City of Seattle or King County may also be involved.

When: This is a 10-week long, full-time program beginning June 11th and ending August 17th 2018.

Compensation: Students will be given a stipend of $6,500 for the 10 weeks.

Desired qualifications:

  • Demonstrated experience in issues related to social good
  • Research experience with quantitative or qualitative tools
  • Strong academic record
  • Previous programming experience

For complete information about this opportunity, including how to apply, click here.