The DSI’s Data Science Clinic bridges the gap between theory and practice by offering UChicago students opportunities to work on real-world projects at the cutting edge of data science and artificial intelligence. This year, 202 students applied their data science skills through the Clinic to a broad spectrum of challenges, with projects including using machine learning to reduce the costs of particle physics research at Fermilab and developing models to predict landslides in Rwanda.

In the Clinic, students work as teams of data scientists under the guidance of one to two mentors – experts from among our partners and University of Chicago faculty and postdocs – meeting weekly to share progress and troubleshoot challenges. Students also gain experience adapting their approaches and communicating with each other and their clients as they work together to produce deliverables.

In addition to providing students with real-world experience, Clinic projects offer a distinct benefit to our partners. According to Assistant Clinic Director Tim Hannifan, “The Clinic provides a valuable opportunity for our partner organizations to test ideas they may lack the resources or capacity to explore in-house, and allows them to work with some of the brightest students, in many cases supplementing their talent pipeline.”

Expanding Capacity with Fresh Perspectives and Cutting Edge Technology

This year, Clinic teams completed 28 projects to support clients at home and abroad, including industry partners, UChicago institutions, nonprofit organizations, and international university partners:

Morningstar worked with students to leverage frontier large language models (LLMs) to augment their client’s capabilities. Under the mentorship of Assistant Clinic Director Tim Hannifan and DSI Postdoctoral Scholar Patricia Chiril, the team built an end-to-end AI agent framework to train open-source models for Morningstar’s needs using minimal effort and cost.

As a global renewable energy company, Invenergy must ensure it’s in compliance with regulatory policy wherever its customers are based. To expedite this work, a Clinic team overseen by Clinic Director and Associate Senior Instructional Professor Nick Ross and DSI Postdoctoral Scholar Julia Mendelsohn developed a chatbot to quickly digest regulatory documents, extract information, and respond precisely to complex questions while integrating seamlessly into Invenergy’s existing resources.

One student team was enlisted by the University of Rwanda to evaluate landslide risk in the Gitwe-Kaduha corridor, a region considered at high risk of landslides due to low forest density and unstable slopes. To do this, the team first conducted a risk assessment before developing four predictive models to inform early warning systems and mitigation strategies.

Another team worked on PalmWatch, a web tool developed by the DSI for Inclusive Development International (IDI) to quantify the effects of the palm oil industry. The team integrated a new feature into the tool to identify and classify human rights violations to support IDI’s goal to hold companies responsible for their environmental impacts.

Faced with the challenge of housing an additional 80,000 volumes annually in an already-overflowing collection, the University of Chicago Library enlisted the Clinic to support. Their Clinic team developed a processing system to determine whether a volume should be stored onsite at the Library vs. offsite.

Celebrating Excellence in the Clinic

This spring, the DSI hosted several events to celebrate the accomplishments of students and thank our mentors and faculty for their contributions. Industry clinic partners, including Invenergy and Morningstar, gathered in April to celebrate the year’s successes and thank mentors for their work guiding teams to ensure the success and impact of each project.

“We’re incredibly grateful to our industry mentors who lent their expertise and time to the Clinic,” Executive Director of the DSI David Uminsky said. “Their impact on the projects and students themselves cannot be overstated. Without them, the Clinic simply would not be possible.”

The Data Clinic Symposium, held on campus in May, recognized mentors and students for their efforts in the Clinic this year. Leadership presented the 2024-2025 Award for Excellence in Data Science for Data Science Clinic Mentor of the Year, for exceptional leadership and dedication to their students to:

• Ganghua Wang, a DSI postdoctoral research scholar. Wang mentored the team assessing landslide risk for the University of Rwanda.
• Bill Trok, a preceptor in Data Science. Trok guided a team in building a chatbot to support the Argonne National Laboratory’s work.

In his remarks, Clinic Director Nick Ross spoke to mentors’ impact: “Mentors play a critical part in the success of the Data Science Clinic, not only guiding students but also inspiring and empowering the next generation of data scientists.”

The following students were also recognized with the 2024-2025 Award for Excellence in Data Science for Project of the Year, for their innovation and collaboration:

• Michelangelo Pagan and Harper Schwab, who were members of the PalmWatch project.
• Ricardo Calderon, who was a member of the UChicago Library Storage project.

Thank you to our Clinic teams and mentors for all of their work this academic year. We look forward to taking on new challenges using data next year.

You can learn more about past Clinic projects here. Contact the DSI to learn more about how your organization can get involved with the Data Science Clinic.