Call for Faculty Participation. December 2019.

The Data Science Institute is pleased to call for Faculty Participation in the Spring and/or Summer 2020 sessions of the 3rd cohort of Data Science Institute (DSI) Scholars Program. The goal of the DSI Scholars Program is to engage undergraduate and master students to work with Columbia faculty, through a data science research internship. Last year, we worked with 47 projects and received more than 400 unique applications from Columbia Students. The program’s unique enrichment activities will foster a learning and collaborative community in data science at Columbia.

  • Funding support: The DSI will support faculty by providing stipend funds for selected scholars up to $2,500 each. Approximately 20 such stipend funds will be awarded. Allocation of funds will be made via a first-come-first-serve need-based process, with efforts to balance allocation across disciplines and to support novel interdisciplinary research.

  • Administrative support: The DSI education committee will collect faculty-submitted internship positions and create an umbrella application page to solicit student applications. The collected applications for each position will be compiled and sent to the hosting faculty/center/lab for review. The faculty/center/lab will review, identify and notify the Scholars for their own projects.

  • Intellectual support via the DSI Scholars enrichment activities: The DSI education committee will organize the following enrichment activities for the DSI Scholars Program.

    • Bootcamps on Data Science Research Skills - During school breaks and the first week of summer 2020, we will run bootcamps on data science research skills. All students who have been selected for a DSI Scholars project (receiving matching funds or not) are especially encouraged to attend, with additional seats available for other interested applicants.

    • Scholars in Data Science meetup series - Throughout this series, we will provide Scholars opportunities to learn about data science research outside their own project and a community of peer student researchers. Each session will be led by a data scientist at Columbia and will consist of a 45-minute seminar talk and a 45-minute hands-on activity.

    • Annual Research Poster Session: All DSI Scholars (receiving matching funds or not) will be invited to present their research during a DSI poster session at DSI Town Hall in the fall semester 2020.

The Data Science Institute will encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply to this program.

Application to participate: Faculty/Research Centers/Research Labs who are interested in participating in this program as internship hosts must complete the application form. The application deadline is December 27th, 2019 January 9th, 2020. Decisions on the allocation of funds will be made by December 31st, 2019 January 10th, 2020.

Key dates:

  • December 27th, 2019 Still accepting proposals
    • [Faculty -> DSI] Faculty/Center/Lab scholars internship host application due.
  • December 31st, 2019 January 10th, 2020
    • [DSI -> Faculty] DSI Scholars funding decisions will be sent to faculty.
    • [DSI -> Students] Program announcement will be sent to students and application website goes live.
  • January 27th, 2019
    • [Students -> DSI] Student applications due.
    • [DSI -> Faculty] Applications shared with faculty/center/lab.
  • February 21nd, 2019
    • [Faculty -> Student] Faculty sends an email offer of the internship to the selected student(s).
    • [Faculty -> DSI] Information on selected Scholars due to DSI.

Please email questions to dsi-scholars@columbia.edu.