A presentation of the project “Mapping the Uncanny Valley” made by students Priya Dharmala (right side at the top ) and Anthony Zhang, for work done under data science advisor Keith Burghardt (second from top on the right), watched by DataFest chairs Deborah Khider, Fred Morstatter, Goran Muric, and Andres Abeliuk.
More than fifty students reported on their work on seventeen semester-long data science projects advised by faculty across different USC schools as part of the CKIDSxGRIDS DataFest Fall 2020. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the event was a virtual meeting with three parallel presentation tracks and a final awards ceremony.
The event was co-chaired by Andres Abeliuk, Deborah Khider, Fred Morstatter, and Goran Murik, and was co-sponsored by CKIDS and the GRIDS data science student association.
The projects of DataFest F20 were (descriptions available here):
1. Worldwide Survey Estimates of Maternal Bereavement
2. Investigations of a Data Science Online Community
3. The aging individual brain
4. Mapping the Uncanny Valley
5. Mapping the impacts of climate change across LA County
6. A framework for enabling software comparison and classification
7. Integration of Frame Semantics to Cyber Ontologies
8. Brain morphometry from contrast-enhanced T1-weighted brain MRIs
9. Social Graph Analysis and Attribution of Software Exploit Contributors Using GitHub
10. Machine Learning to Analyze Rock Microstructures
11. Generation of a Sports-based Introductory Data Science Curriculum to Increase Participation of Underrepresented Groups in STEM
12. User-centered building design preference assessment to develop data-driven interactive architectural design guideline models
13. Detecting Biases in College Football Recruiting
14. Tracking health and nutrition signals from social media data
15. Digital Democracy: Using Social Media to Improve Political Discourse
16. Characterizing the counter-narratives of climate change
17. Team Dynamics in Online Multiplayer Games
Awards
Yolanda Gil, Director of CKIDS, gave several awards to students for their outstanding achievements:
- Best Data Science Open and Sharing Practices: Haripriya Dharmala
- Project: Mapping the Uncanny Valley
- Best Interdisciplinary Data Scientist: David Lin
- Project: The Aging Individual Brain
- Best Interdisciplinary Data Scientist: Devendra Swami
- Project: Investigations of a Data Science Online Community
- Best Data Science Developer: Bin Zhang
- Project: A framework for enabling software comparison and classification
- Best Data Science Developer: Param Bole
- Project: A framework for enabling software comparison and classification
- Best Project Achievement: Anthony Zhang
- Project: Mapping the Uncanny Valley
- Best Data Science Collaboration Practices: Shunlin Lu
- Project: The Aging Individual Brain
- Best Data Science Collaboration Practices: Tianyu Zhu
- Project: The Aging Individual Brain
- Best Data Science Team Leader: Simon Khan
- Project: Mapping the Impacts of Climate Change across LA County
- Best Data Science Teamwork: Aditi Singh, Madeleine Thompson, Malika Seth, Asumi Suguro
- Project: Worldwide Survey Estimates of Maternal Bereavement
- Best Data Science Insight: Nadia Kadakova
- Project: The Aging Individual Brain
- Best Interdisciplinary Data Science Team: Simon Khan, Vinith Angadi, Yingxi Lin, Shalini Mustala, Maria MacHarrie
- Project: Mapping the Impacts of Climate Change across LA County
- Best Interdisciplinary Data Science Team: Devendra Swami, Jacob Bickman, Jae Young Kim, Kevin Tsang, Weiwei Zheng
- Project: Investigations of a Data Science Online Community
- Best Data Collection: Sushmitha Ravikumar, Vanshika Sridharan, Abhilash Pandurangan
- Project: Characterizing the Counter-Narratives of Climate Change
- Best Data Science Mentor: Shruti Gadewar
- Project: The Aging Individual Brain
- Best Data Science Mentor: Myrl Marmarelis
- Project: The Aging Individual Brain
- Best Cyberphysical Data Science Team: Anthony Zhang, Priya Dharmala, Raveena Kshatriya, Nai Cih Liou, Sakshi Goel
- Project: Mapping the Uncanny Valley
- Best Project Presentation: Abhivineet Veeraghanta, Bolong Pan, Bryan Beh, Hanzhi Zhang, Feilong Wu
- Project: Machine Learning to Analyze Rock Microstructures
The award recipients spoke about how much they had learned from these projects, the new colleagues and friends that they had made along the way, and the great benefits of working closely with faculty members.
DataFest Spring 2020 is the fourth DataFest event held at USC. Previous events were DataFest Spring 2020, DataFest Fall 2019, and DataFest Spring 2019.