Summer break is quickly approaching and we hope everyone had a great semester! Please be sure to read about our summer closure plan.
- D-Lab Summer Closure -
With the end of the semester rapidly approaching, we want to let you know
about the plan for D-Lab summer closures.
As of Friday, May 7 @ 5:00 pm, D-Lab will be closed to the public (virtual space, front desk, workshops, new consulting requests, and consulting drop-ins). If you have an open consulting request, we will finish up your existing request from May 7 to May 14 via email or schedule individual Zoom sessions.
We plan to re-open our doors and begin providing services when fall semester begins in August 2021. Our re-opening date is still to be determined, but we will let you all know our plan as we get closer to early August. Our newsletter updates over the summer will change from our regular weekly updates instead to occasional updates as we have information to share.
We hope everyone has a great rest of the semester! If you have questions, please email: dlab-frontdesk@berkeley.edu
- Blog Post -
Handling Missing Data
"I recently started working with a set of eviction data for a project on housing precarity at the Urban Displacement Project. As I began exploring the dataset, I was excited to find that it appeared to contain a wealth of historical data we could use to train a robust model for predicting eviction rates in urban neighborhoods. However, my initial excitement soon had to be scaled back when a standard check for missing data revealed that many of the observations lacked values for precisely the variable we aimed to predict. I was now faced with the problem of what to do about this sizable hole at the very center of an otherwise promising dataset..."
To learn more about how Brooks handles and works with missing data, view Brooks full blog here!
- Featured Event -
V-Lab Workshop: Augmented Reality May 7 | 10:00 Am to 12:00 PM | Register Here
This workshop, led by Ana María Zapata Guzmán (University of The Andes), will introduce participants to the design and mechanics of augmented reality, geared towards professionals and artists working with images. Attendees will create Artivive accounts and learn to create an AR animation.
No prior technical experience necessary.
- Upcoming Working Groups -
Computational Text Analysis: Returning to Foster Care
May 7 | 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM | Register Link
Speaker: Alicia Tsai, EECS PhD student at UC Berkeley
Child welfare agencies access families for child abuse and neglect and mak recoomendations regarding a placement plan for the child. This project investigates cases where children re-enter to foster care following an exit to permanent care arrangements. Past research on reentry to foster care has focused primarily on structured data such as age, race, and mental health, etc. This project is a work in progress where we tap into the unstructured text data associated with these cases and discuss the potential questions arising from a computational text driven analysis.
Securing Research Data Working Group
May 24 | 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM | Register Link
Speaker: Alison Henry and Julie Goldstein
Alison Henry, Chief Information Security Officer, and Julie Goldstein, Information Security Policy Manager, on the new Roles and Responsibilities policy for data security.
The goal of this working group is to understand issues around sensitive/restricted use research data from a variety of views - especially from the perspective of Berkeley researchers who need and use such data and the staff and units who support that. We will also seek to develop concrete solutions and products - whether it is environments, model security plans or data use agreements, or compendia of local data or resources. A third goal of this group is to provide input to IT and other organizations working on developing a set of suggested solutions to provide to campus leadership.
- Job Opportunities at D-Lab -
Call for D-Lab Data Science Fellows
D-Lab Data Science Fellows recruitment is coming soon! Please stay tuned for more information. You can learn more about our Fellows program here.
D-Lab is hiring a Department Manager
We are hiring a department manager who will be expected to assist the executive director in all aspects of program planning, function as a resource for all D-Lab staff, and more. Applicants should have strong communication and organization skills and a good awareness of data science fields.
For a complete list of application requirements and job expectations, please view here.
Qualtrics is a powerful online tool available to Berkeley community members that can be used for a range of data collection activities. Primarily, Qualtrics is designed to make web surveys easy to write, test, and implement, but the software can be used for data entry, training, quality control, evaluation, market research, pre/post-event feedback, and other uses with some creativity. This overview will introduce a simple workflow using the system with an orientation to the main interfaces for web survey design, sample management, corresponding with sample members, and exporting data at the end of the field period. Examples from completed surveys in public health, economics, program evaluation, and other disciplines will be incorporated in the overview.
An introduction to programming basics in Bash and GitHub that are often assumed, but that you might have never had good instruction on! The first half of this workshop will introduce you navigating your computer’s filesystem and basic Bash commands to remove the fear of working with the command line to give you the confidence to use it to increase your productivity. The second half of this workshop will introduce you to Git, a powerful tool for keeping track of changes you make to the files in a project. You can use it to synchronize your work across computers, collaborate with others, and even deploy applications to the cloud. In this workshop, you will learn the basics to understand and use Git, including working with the popular "social coding" website, GitHub.
To see a calendar view of our May 2021 workshops, click here!
- Consulting Drop-in Hours -
We are continuing to offer drop-in
consulting Monday-Friday from 10am-5pm through Friday, May 7.
Stop by our virtual front desk
to speak with a consultant.
Are you interested in developing transferable competencies that are attractive to employers and academic programs? In our digital humanities program, the UC Berkeley Cultural Analytics Learning Institute for Digital Humanities (CALI-DH), you will explore questions about art and culture using digital tools. By pairing computational methods and domain specialization you can better understand complex phenomena and cultures and how computational analysis influences what you see. CALI-DH Online will guide you through the entire process of identifying relevant cultural artifacts and archives, curating your own subset of data, conducting advanced research, and communicating your findings.
To learn more about the courses offered this summer please visit here!
- Upcoming Event -
ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization October 5-9 | More Info
The inaugural ACM conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms and Optimization (EAAMO ’21) aims to highlight work where techniques from algorithms, optimization, and mechanism design, along with insights from other disciplines, can help improve equity and access to opportunity for historically disadvantaged and underserved communities.
EAAMO ’21 will feature keynote presentations and panels and contributed presentations on research papers, surveys, problem pitches, datasets, and software demonstrations.
In line with the MD4SG core values of bridging research and practice, the conference aims to provide an international forum for researchers as well as policy-makers and practitioners in various government and non-government organizations, community organizations, and industry to build interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder research pipelines.
Submission deadline is June 3, 2021, more information on how to submit here.
- Jobs & External Opportunities -
L&S Graduate Mentor
Seeking graduate students from the areas of Arts & Humanities, Biological Science, Interdisciplinary Studies, Mathematics & Physical Science, Social Sciences, and/or graduate students with liberal arts backgrounds currently studying in a professional school program, to mentor L&S undergraduates. You'll help students explore their interests, get involved in research, form relationships with faculty, and plan for the future while gaining valuable work experience yourself.
The position requires 10hrs/wk, paying $25/hr. STEM candidates and candidates from diverse or underrepresented backgrounds are encouraged to apply.
The application deadline is May 4 (or until filled). If interested, click here to learn more!
HUM 295 The Human Experience within Art, Technology, and Data
This seminar will focus on the project of synthesizing the interdisciplinary fields of visual art, performance, music, digital technologies, applied data science, and critical studies in the humanities to create new opportunities for innovators interested in a post-anthropocentric and a socially and environmentally balanced future. The courses are open by application and include a $1,300 department award/research stipend for each student.
If interested, please view the full description and apply through here by May 15th.
C-GEM Summer Research Program
The NSF Center for Genetically Encoded Materials (C-GEM) is searching for a developer to build a web-based database to support a diverse set of ribosome engineering efforts. This database will serve as a critical resource for C-GEM and the broader chemical, synthetic, and engineering biology communities. We are looking for a motivated developer who can create the architecture of this database and generate instructions on how to input raw data by May 7th. We envision two UIs: one for data entry and one for searching/data display. We would like to have a beta version of the database available for internal use by May 24th. We will support an additional round of development in July or August (once the database is populated) to make modifications suggested by the C-GEM community prior to public release. We look forward to collaborating with a software expert to make our vision a reality!
The Risk Resilience Research lab at the University of California, Berkeley is recruiting a Graduate Student Researcher to be appointed at 50% time. The expected start date is May 15, 2021, and the recruitment will be open until filled. The level of appointment will be commensurate with the applicant’s experience.
Assistant Professor, Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute
UC San Diego invites applications from outstanding candidates for an open-rank (tenure-track or tenured) faculty position for a primary appointment at the Halicioglu Data Science Institute (HDSI) with an optional joint appointment in another academic department. HDSI welcomes outstanding candidates who advance research at the intersection of Data Science and Health Sciences/ Humanities/Social Sciences. A successful candidate should use and/or develop Data Science methods to study important societal questions related to Black communities anywhere in the US, Africa, or the Black Diaspora.
Support D-Lab
Join our community of donors by making a gift to D-Lab. Contributions of any size will support free, inclusive workshops and resources for the UC Berkeley community. Give today!
