Student work
Examples
Cross-institution work and outputs produced by DataSquad student analysts.
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Making Voter Data Usable for Research, at Scale
A fragmented 10TB national voter file became a single analysis-ready dataset now used across political science, economics, and health research.
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Shedding Light on Injustice
Four cohorts of DataSquad consultants spent five years building the dataset behind Terence Keel's book on hidden deaths in police custody.
By Julia Wood, Ethan Allavarpu, Tristan Dewing, Lawrence Lee
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Carceral Ecologies: LAPD Surveillance Flight Data
A 318-minute data-loading bottleneck became a 2-minute pipeline, unlocking research that went on to national attention and a $5 million grant.
By Lawrence Lee, Madeline Kim
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Preserving Vietnamese Refugee Heritage Through 3D Technology
3D scanning let the DSC digitize fragile refugee artifacts and publish the first public exhibit tracing one family's maritime escape across the Pacific.
By Doug Daniels, Bianca Badajos, Connor Lim
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Como-Q: A Skincare Ingredient Screener
The DataSquad's first project for an outside applicant: an R tool that flags comedogenic (pore-clogging) ingredients in skincare and hygiene products.
By Will Foote, Isabel Light
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Visualizing Global Obstacles to Student Data Services
A UCLA consultant cleaned and visualized DataSquad International's first cross-institution survey on what stops campuses from employing student data analysts.
By Will Foote
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Analyzing Ancient Chinese Buddhist Text with Python
Standard NLP tools assume modern, pre-segmented text. A Ming-dynasty Buddhist corpus needed a different approach to segmentation and comparison.
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Digitizing Ant Nests to Study Tunneling Behavior
When broken wax casts of ant tunnels threatened years of fieldwork, 3D scanning let researchers reconstruct the nests digitally instead.
By Doug Daniels
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Squirrels in Motion
Motion-sensor collars on wild ground squirrels produced accelerometer data at 100 readings a second; the DSC helped turn it into a behavior-prediction model.
