One of my favorite plays in the Civic Technology space in Chicago is the Data Science for Social Good Fellowship. Led by Matt Gee one of the leaders in the Chicago civic tech scene, DSSG is a University of Chicago summer program for data science graduate and undergraduates to work on data mining, machine learning, big data, and data science projects with social impact. They are brought to Chicago from around the globe to work with governments and non-profits, applying data science to real-world challenges. For three months, they apply their coding, analytics, and data science skills on societal challenges in education, health, energy, transportation, economic development, international development, and more.
This year, the program brought 42 fellows to Chicago. The fellows are students from quantitative and computational fields – from computer science and machine learning to statistics, math, and physical sciences, to social sciences, public health and public policy. From end of May to the end of August, they have been working in small teams of 3-4 on data science projects along with project partners to tackle high impact problems. So now is a great time to have them meet those who are passionate about data, and how it can be used, in the words of DSSG “to tackle problems that really matter”. Who is more passionate about this than the Chicago City Data Users Group?
On August 17th at 6:00pm, some of the DSSG fellows will present their work to the Chicago City Data Users Group (CCDUG). Some use city data, and some even create new open data sources for the city. It should be a fantastic meeting of the minds. Please come join us and RSVP here.
