A Data Science Fellowship with a Social Impact Spin
When Chris Qian first stepped into Tech Impact’s Data Innovation Lab office in Newark, Delaware to kick off his one-year Data Science Fellowship, he was excited and enthusiastic.
“When I was looking at potential job opportunities after school, the Data Lab caught my attention–out of all the openings I saw, not many had a social impact spin.” Chris, who had recently received his PhD from the University of Illinois in Statistics, knew he wanted to work with data and apply his skills to important, real-world problems. He came across the Lab’s one-year fellowship program and after a great interview experience, accepted a role into the Lab’s 2024 fellow cohort.
During his time with the Lab, Chris was able to apply what he learned in school to a multitude of different projects with several Delaware state agencies. The nature of the Fellowship–a learning experience, funded through a federal grant, that pairs fellows of different skills, experiences, and backgrounds with social impact projects–allowed Chris to work closely with the small group of other fellows that included Data Scientists like him, as well as Data Engineers and Front-End Developers. “Not only did I increase my technical skills by working with emerging technologies like generative AI, but I also gained leadership and soft skills by working on complex projects with fellows of different roles.”
One of Chris’s favorite projects to work on was supporting the research associated with Delaware’s Group Violence Intervention program, which began in 2019 with the aim to reduce gun violence and create safe, thriving communities in Delaware. “While doing end-of-year reporting, we wanted to understand the impact of the program, which was a challenging problem. How do you quantify whether the program is working if there aren’t obvious and straight-forward metrics to assess? In this case, how do you measure your impact if your success is centered around what someone didn’t do, versus what they did do?” Chris was able to dig through the copious amount of data the program had collected and identify key statistics and performance indicators that helped provide evidence of the program’s impact in its community.
Chris’s next step? He’ll be moving on as a Senior Data Scientist at C3.ai, a leading provider of Enterprise AI. He’s excited to apply all the skills he culminated, from his Ph.D. program to his Data Lab Fellowship, to his next venture and continue working on important projects in the AI space. “I recommend checking out the Lab for anyone interested in applying their data skills to a good cause. The passion our clients had for their projects was infectious and motivating.”