Alan Liang: Helping Build Data Science Education from the Ground Up

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When Alan Liang applied for a job as an undergraduate student assistant at UC Berkeley in December 2017, the last thing on his mind was helping launch a nationwide revolution in teaching data science at colleges and universities.

President Biden appoints BIDS faculty director Saul Perlmutter to Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

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Saul Perlmutter, an astrophysicist and faculty director of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS), has been appointed to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the White House announced today. The council is the body of external advisors charged with advising President Joe Biden and the White House on science, technology and innovation policy.

Meredith Lee named to board of new California cradle-to-career data system

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UC Berkeley’s Meredith Lee has been appointed to the governing board of the new California statewide Cradle-to-Career Data System, which will link information across spectrums like education and social services to better equip policymakers, educators and the public to address social and economic disparities and improve opportunities for students across the state to succeed.

Fourth community college receives data science class articulation approval from UC Berkeley

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Transfer students from the City College of San Francisco (CCSF) who take its foundational data science course will now get credit for Data 8 at UC Berkeley, a data science class at the university. City College is the fourth community college to receive Berkeley’s Data Science Undergraduate Studies program approval for Data 8 articulation. The Math 108 class at CCSF helps students learn about data science and provides relevant transfer credits.

UC Berkeley researchers receive $2 million grant to build criminal justice big data tools

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A group of UC Berkeley researchers recently won a 3-year, $2 million National Science Foundation grant to improve the useability of big criminal justice datasets for public defenders and others. The new Effective Programming, Interaction, and Computation with Data (EPIC) Lab will create computing tools to help defenders, investigators and paralegals without coding expertise more easily research police misconduct, judicial decision-making and related issues for their cases. These tools will initially be used in San Francisco, Alameda and Sacramento.

Hani Gomez, Ph.D.: Computing pedagogy at the nexus of technology and social justice

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As an electrical engineering Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, Hani Gomez specialized in microrobotics, often working in clean rooms designed to keep out dirt and dust. But over the course of her five years of study, she became increasingly interested in a part of academia that’s not so precise nor neat and tidy -- implicit bias, racism and their effects on the university and broader community.

As Project Jupyter celebrates 20 years, Fernando Pérez reflects on how it started, open science’s impact and the value of diversity in coding

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Twenty years ago, UC Berkeley Associate Statistics Professor Fernando Pérez started one of the foundational tools for analyzing large amounts of data in a transparent and collaborative way. We spoke with Pérez about why he started this project, what challenges he’s faced and what to expect from him and Project Jupyter next.

Students help grow data science education, tools globally

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As a leading institution in undergraduate data science studies, UC Berkeley seeks to grow a global community in data science education. The Data Science Undergraduate Studies global adoption and infrastructure student teams are spearheading these efforts.

Berkeley unboxing data science program doubles number of interns in second year

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The Berkeley Unboxing Data Science (BUDS) program nearly doubled its number of interns this summer, building off its 2020 inaugural success teaching data analysis skills to underprivileged high school students.

Data science discovery program students help open accounting data from ancient Mesopotamia

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Some UC Berkeley researchers are applying such tools to learn more about the past, like deciphering business and personal transactions recorded on clay tablets in ancient Sumer. Such tablets are drawing international attention with the news that the United States was returning 17,000 tablets and other ancient relics to Iraq at the end of July.