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Developing Ensemble Methods for Initial Districting Plan Evaluation
Project leads: Daryl DeFord, Assistant Professor of Data Analytics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Washington State University Data scientists: Bernease Herman and Vaughn Iverson DSSG fellows: Rowana Ahmed, Katherine Chang, Ryan Goehrung, Michael Souffrant. Get the participant bios here. Project Summary: Gerrymandering, the drawing of legislative boundaries for improper purposes, is a fundamental threat to…
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Testimonials from our Summer 2021 Hackweek Programs
This year the eScience Institute hosted another summer of our hackweek programs, including OceanHackweek, SnowEx Hackweek and NeuroHackademy. The sudden shift to a remote setting in spring 2020 brought new challenges for our eScience research team, and we came away with some valuable lessons learned and ideas to incorporate into this year’s iterations of hackweeks.…
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Geography, Equity, and the Seattle $15 Minimum Wage Ordinance
Project leads: Jennie Romich, Professor of Social Welfare at the UW School of Social Work and Faculty Director of the West Coast Poverty Center Data scientists: Jose Hernandez and Valentina Staneva DSSG fellows: Lamar Foster, Delaney Glass, Christopher Salazar, Mahader Tamene Participant bios available here. Project Summary: This project examines the minimum wage as a solution to income inequality – and one potential…
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Data Science for Social Good Team Builds Tools to Support Fairness in Computational Redistricting
By: Emily Keller-O’Donnell This fall, Congressional leaders will begin the state redistricting process that takes place every ten years to reflect population changes captured by the U.S. Census. As the process gets underway, a team in the University of Washington Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) program is creating a resource guide to help nonpartisan…
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Data Science for Social Good: Exploring Geographic Factors of Seattle’s Minimum Wage Law
By: Emily Keller-O’Donnell When the Seattle minimum wage law took effect in 2015, it dovetailed with an increase in housing prices as an influx of high-wage technology workers moved to the region. For an interdisciplinary team in the University of Washington Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) program, this raises the question of whether some…
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Data Science for Social Good Program Launches for Summer 2021
By: Emily Keller On June 14th, the University of Washington’s Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) summer program began with eight student fellows working on two project teams in collaboration with data scientists from the eScience Institute and project leads from academic institutions. Student fellows joined the program from colleges and universities around the country.…
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How UW Medicine is Using Cloud Computing to Aid Seattle’s Covid Response
Over the past year, the University of Washington and UW Medicine have been at the heart of the city of Seattle’s Covid-19 response: researchers studying social distancing and how the virus spreads on our communities, volunteers collecting and distributing supplies, clinical vaccine trials, and a partnership with the city to process over 2 million test…
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Help the Fibr Algorithm Learn to Read MRI Scans
By: Louisa Gaylord The majority of mental health disorders are first diagnosed in childhood or adolescence. The disorders most commonly detected in young people include ADHD, anxiety, depression and behavior problems. Historically, individual labs and researchers interested in understanding the brain basis of mental health only had access to small amounts of data to analyze,…
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Using Social Media to Model Backcountry Use in Rainier National Park
Project Lead: Gabe Wisswaesser, School of Environmental & Forest Sciences eScience Liaison: Spencer Wood As public land use increases, accurate visitation numbers are paramount to managers and researchers interested in mitigating and understanding anthropogenic effects. Alpine water quality, as of late, has been under exceptionally high pressure because human waste mitigation is not keeping up with…
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Detecting Wildflowers in Spectral Imagery
Project Lead: Aji John, Department of Biology eScience Liaison: Nicoleta Cristea and Amanda Tan Alpine wildflowers are integral part of montane ecosystems; they provide a wide variety of ecosystem services like pollination, and nutrient recycling. Numerous studies have found that these wildflower species are sensitive to climate warming as their flowering phenology (development stage) is strongly related to…