Last month the eScience Institute held the “Learning and Doing Data For Good” conference, an event for current students and alumni in university-based data for good programs, their project partners, and data science professionals. The goal was to inspire discussions and networking with others who are motivated to learn from and meet the needs of communities and people using data for change. The eScience Institute co-hosted the conference with the West Big Data Innovation Hub, the Academic Data Science Alliance, and the University of British Columbia’s Data Science Institute.
The three-day conference featured four sessions of presentations focused on common themes: Discovering Data and Modeling in Public Health; Transparency, Accountability, and Engagement with Civic Systems; Climate Change and Environmental Impacts; and Housing, Poverty, and Employment. There was also a poster display, as well as a career paths panel with representatives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the California Council on Science and Technology, JP Morgan Chase, and Google AI for Nature and Society. “This unique conference created a platform to highlight the work of student teams using their data science skills for socially impactful projects across a range of topics and partner organizations,” said Sarah Stone, Executive Director of the eScience Institute.
Louisa Gaylord 