Seven School of Information students have been awarded fellowships for 2023-24. From research on tracking natural disasters to migration, these scholars are pushing the boundaries of cybersecurity, data science, and information science. These fellowships will support student endeavors to better digital information technologies, mitigate climate change, further lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or queer studies, promote cybersecurity, and use data science for good.
Steven Weber Futures Fellowship
Leslie Noye
Leslie Noye is a first-year Master of Information Management and Systems (MIMS) student whose research is aimed at improving disaster resilience in Ghana. Noye has worked to develop flood early warning systems in the region by partnering with local climate organizations to collect data regarding flooding incidents. He aims to utilize digital information technology models such as mobile applications to provide real-time updates and interactive maps.
“This empowers potential land buyers/business owners to make informed decisions, knowing whether the area of interest is susceptible to flooding or not,” explained Noye. “By engaging a diverse array of stakeholders, we nurture cooperation and collective action, resulting in these communities becoming more resilient and better equipped to manage disasters effectively.”
Quigley/Heffernan Family Environmental Fellowship
Ashutosh Tiwari
MIMS student Ashutosh Tiwari has founded multiple startups centered around fighting climate change. His most recent — Carbon Sustain — utilizes cutting-edge AI and data science research to track carbon emissions and provide companies with actionable insights. Carbon Sustain has since been accepted to SkyDeck’s incubator program as well as the Berkeley StEP program.
“I was always fascinated by the potential of technology to address pressing environmental issues,” Tiwari said. “The climate tech space is as challenging as it is rewarding and any support will only accelerate our progress.”
Paul Fasana LGBTQ Studies Fellowship
Kent Chang
Ph.D. candidate Kent Chang has extensively studied and published articles related to queer theory and natural language processing (NLP). In papers published last year, he explored the possibility of studying queer culture using machine learning, built an annotated dataset to computationally detect floor changes in movie and TV dialogues, and showed how popularity and canonicity may be related to the degree to which a literary novel has been memorized by large language models like ChatGPT.
“When queer theory and contemporary NLP models work in tandem, we could have the opportunity to offer a quantitative history of queer representation and sensibility as they are mediated by the cultural industry,” Chang noted.
Curtis B. Smith Cybersecurity Fellowship
Sarah Barrington
Sarah Barrington, a first-year Ph.D. student and recent MIMS graduate, is working at the forefront of deepfakes and misinformation. As a member of Professor Hany Farid’s digital forensics lab, she has worked extensively on issues of deepfake detection and generative AI. Barrington is currently interested in exploring emerging misinformation ecosystems in current war zones such as Israel-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine, seeking to quantify the nature and scale of targeted misinformation campaigns.
“Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly irregulated … The expected outcomes of this work will be highly impactful in demonstrating the shifting landscape of trusted information, empowering both high-level decision-makers and internet users worldwide to rebuild trust in online information,” Barrington stated.
Jack Larson Data for Good Fellowship
Melia Soque
Second-year Master of Information and Data Science (MIDS) student Melia Soque’s research is deeply rooted in Hawaiian culture and traditions. Having grown up in Honolulu, she has witnessed the ongoing migration of Native Hawaiians to the mainland and outsiders to the islands. “Indigenous displacement is more than a mere change in location; it reshapes our cultural soul and the very essence of our lands,” she explained.
While certain factors explain this trend such as increased housing prices, Soque is interested in extensively investigating what drives local residents to move away from their native homelands and wants to provide a comprehensive explanation using both anecdotes and data. “Just as our ancestors shared their Mo’olelo (stories) to be passed on, I aim to narrate the histories hidden within data, bridging our past with the future through data science,” she iterated.
Nora Povejsil
Fifth-Year MIDS student Nora Povejsil is no stranger to community-building on the UC Berkeley campus. During her time as an undergraduate, she was involved with two groups: the Daytime Women’s Drop-In Center and The Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance. Her participation in these organizations gave her insight into the way social determinants of public health impact mental and physical well-being and how the housing crisis has impacted women of color in particular. She is now interested in exploring the factors that affect a population of vulnerable women, such as the housing crisis and racial demographics, through the lens of data science.
“My experience witnessing leadership and becoming a leader myself in community development spaces allowed me to understand the unique challenges that decision-makers face, and to identify an immense opportunity to use data science as a tool to address social problems,” said Povejsil.
Samuel Ha
Samuel Ha is a MIDS student who has spent about 7 years using data science for international development. As a director at an international development research firm, he noticed that policymakers were often relying on outdated, inaccurate, and incomplete data to make decisions for vulnerable populations in low-income countries.
Ha hopes to be able to better understand how to support vulnerable communities as data becomes more prevalent in these communities and eventually start his own data science research firm. “With data science, I want to tap into previously untouched repositories of data to learn about key characteristics of target populations, predict their needs in response to natural disasters, better target interventions, and design research to monitor and understand the impact of a policy in real-time,” he explained.
If you are interested in supporting I School students through fellowship funding, please reach out to Director of Philanthropy Tia Foss, or see our giving page.
