Data Science for Social Good

The Data Science for Social Good Summer Fellowship has announced its first class of Fellows.

These 36 DSITs ("data scientists in training" - my term, not theirs) hail from around the country and range in academic backgrounds from Math to Criminal Justice. They'll spend the summer in Chicago, working with various city agencies and local nonprofits to make sense of - and useful tools for - datasets that can help people address social challenges.

It's an inaugural year for the program, run by the Computation Institute and the Urban Center for Computation and Data with support from Eric and Wendy Schmidt. This effort builds on the excitement around civic hacking embodied by CodeForAmerica and today's National Day of Civic Hacking.

I wish them well and I'll be watching!