Data Science Spring 2026 Capstone Project Showcase
Capstone projects are the culmination of the MIDS students’ work in the School of Information’s Master of Information and Data Science program.
Over the course of their final semester, teams of students propose and select project ideas, conduct and communicate their work, receive and provide feedback, and deliver compelling presentations along with a web-based final deliverable.
A panel of judges will select an outstanding project for the Hal R. Varian MIDS Capstone Award.
Join us for an online presentation of these capstone projects.
Judges
Gene Alston
Board Member, Ancestry
Gene Alston is a technology executive and UC Berkeley Master of Information and Data Science alumnus. He brings over 25 years of experience building and scaling global internet platforms.
He previously served as vice president of commerce business and operations at Meta, where he led global strategy, go-to-market, and operations across commerce products spanning Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Prior to Meta, he held leadership roles at Pinterest, Groupon, and PayPal, working across product, partnerships, and international expansion.
Gene currently serves on the board of Ancestry.com and is a member of the California State Bar. He holds degrees from the University of Washington, UC Berkeley, and UCLA (JD/MBA), and began his career as a naval officer aboard the USS Worden.
Roseanna Hopper
Data Scientist, Dataiku
Roseanna Hopper is a full-stack data scientist at Dataiku, where she partners with enterprise clients to realize their GenAI, agentic, and deep learning projects. With over 10 years of experience in customer-facing data science roles, her work is centered on taking clients from proof of concept to production, often on data science initiatives entirely new to their organizations, and leaving teams better equipped to sustain that success on their own. Her specialty is in healthcare and clinical data science. Earlier in her career, Roseanna helped define the data science function at multiple startups, laying the groundwork for teams built to scale. She also taught data science for several years in Northeastern University's Master of Science in Analytics program. She holds a master’s degree in data science (MIDS) from the UC Berkeley School of Information.
Rhonda Shrader
Executive Director, Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship
Rhonda Shrader is the executive director of Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship as well as the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps) Northwest Hub. At Haas, she teaches three popular lean startup courses, Lean Transfer, Startup Disco and Berkeley Changemaker: Solving Friend & Family Business Scaling Challenges as well as Intro to Commercializing Quantum Information. She also leads UC LAUNCH, a curriculum driven accelerator for students, faculty and alums across all 10 University of California campuses.
As an entrepreneur, she was an early team member of MIT spinout Organogenesis, one of the first publicly traded regenerative medicine companies. She has founded or was an early stage team member of startups in biotech, behavioral health, non-profit, retail, and AI. She is an active advisor for NASA spinoff BrainAid as well as the innovation chair for VectorWise CME. She earned an undergraduate degree in neuropsychology and premedical studies from Harvard and an MBA from Berkeley Haas.