Hal R. Varian MIDS Capstone Award

During the final semester of the I School’s Master of Information and Data Science program, students undertake capstone projects which cement skills learned throughout the MIDS program — both core data science skills and “soft skills” like problem-solving, communication, influencing, and management — preparing students for success in the field.

Top projects in each semester are awarded the Hal R. Varian MIDS Capstone Award, named in honor of professor emeritus Hal R. Varian, the founding dean of the Berkeley School of Information and currently the chief economist of Google.


Fall 2023

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We generate up-to-date, high-resolution ground level estimates of nitrogen dioxide pollution for Louisiana using Deep Learning to address residents’ concerns...

Summer 2023

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Our mission is to provide an AI-powered real-time phone translation service as an alternative to human interpreters that is affordable, fast, and delivers...

Spring 2023

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curie.AI is a platform for liver ultrasounds. We help medical sonographers detect liver diseases.

Fall 2022

Line art of a polluting factory is superimposed over the shape of the state of California. Above these images, a play on the word Healthcare is deliberately misspelled, with a capital C and capital A for California, then a lowercase i and r spell Air.
How does air pollution affect pediatric health? We use instrumental variables regression to quantify the impact of PM2.5 pollution exposure on pediatric...

Summer 2022

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We leverage deep learning to solve the inverse design problem, predicting laser parameters to fabricate metamaterials w/ desired emissivity.

Spring 2022

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ASROM empowers medical professionals to make the right decisions at the right time by streamlining the process of conducting a systematic review of medical...

Fall 2021

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Protein Similarity Explorer offers a flexible, interactive tool for researchers to explore structurally similar proteins in the AlphaFold2 DB (DeepMind).

Summer 2021

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Screen Ahead Rx is a tool designed for individualized cancer treatment. The model predicts the anti-cancer...

Spring 2021

TowerScout detecting cooling towers
Automated cooling tower detection through machine learning for Legionnaires’ disease outbreak response and prevention

Fall 2020

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Team LipSpeak is focused on helping people with voice disorders communicate effectively.

Summer 2020

WildTrackAI
WildTrackAI applies cutting-edge computer vision technologies to enhance non-invasive monitoring of endangered species using footprints.

Spring 2020

Sidewaukee: Making our city accessible
Enabling wheelchair users to confidently anticipate obstacles using street view images and crowd-sourced real-time insights.

Fall 2019

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FairAir shows environmental activists where air pollution is likely to be worst in a city and recommends where to deploy low-cost sensors to improve pollution...

Summer 2019

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Snout harnesses the combination of computer vision and human intelligence to guide you in classifying & learning about mushrooms.

Spring 2019

Fall 2018

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We use mobile phone microscopy & automated image analysis to diagnose parasitic infection in the developing world.

Summer 2018

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Informing voters on candidate stances and voting information

Spring 2018

Scriboto
Patients should be the doctor’s focus, not the computer.  Scriboto listens to clinical conversation and writes it into an EHR note so that doctors don’t have...

Fall 2017

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DeepJams allows users to augment traditional music compositions with model-generated extensions. We use a neural network trained on a genre corpus to extend...
FlexCheck Dashboard
FlexCheck uses computer vision to help you track your progress in injury recovery or performance training. All you have to do is upload an image: FlexCheck...

Summer 2017

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An easy-to-use platform for organizations to harness the power of machine learning.

Spring 2017

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Mitigating online gender harassment through 1) user feedback, 2) empathetic innovation, and 3) data-science products
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YaBO! is a web portal to give restaurant owners the insights they need to become successful.

Fall 2016

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1st Place
A clinical decision-making tool that allows hospital staff and physicians to use predictive modelling to reduce diabetes readmissions.
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2nd Place
A toxic-substance data consolidation platform with easy access to your overall exposure levels of pollutants.

Summer 2016

The personal assistant to help you tick all your fitness goals!
1st Place
GoalTick - The personal assistant to help you tick all your fitness goals!

Spring 2016

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1st Place
Tomographica is an artificial intelligence tool for radiologists. With higher sensitivity and fewer false-positives than any offering currently on the market,...
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2nd Place
Assess the power of satellite images combined with weather data to predict yields and to do a comparative analysis of modeling strategies.

Fall 2015

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1st Place
Personalized recommendation engine using features gathered from Instagram images.
2nd Place
We use advanced statistical methods based on extensive historical data to predict player performance. Using probability distributions, we show how likely a...