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Qualifications:
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UW-Madison and Madison College undergraduate and graduate students with applicable backgrounds in any field are eligible to apply. Students must be enrolled in a degree program during the calendar year with at least one semester remaining after the internship’s conclusion.
Application materials should include:
- A one-page cover letter that highlights your qualifications based on skills identified in the project listing and your interest in open source broadly.
- A resume that includes your name, school email address, phone number, field(s) of study (major, minor, degree, certificate), relevant coursework, extracurricular activities, expected graduation date, relevant sample work (ex: GitHub link, personal website, etc.) and any relevant work or research experience.
-The names and contact information of three references.
Submit a resume, cover letter, and three references as part of your application. |
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Position Summary/Job Duties:
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As part of a research grant through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (2022-2024), we have developed Knowledge Map (KM), a reporting tool for survey data taken from past research on environmental challenges faced by communities in Dane County, Wisconsin. KM’s development was influenced by research with local government and non-profit organizations, which displays (1) the representativeness of the survey sample and (2) data visualizations. The representativeness is produced by comparing the survey responses' distribution to a selected geographic level (e.g., census tract, county). It provides an evaluation of the representativeness of the data using the approach described in Qi et al. (2021). The visualizations report mostly categorical data with open-text responses using structured topic modeling. The tool has been developed using RShiny and is available in a private repository (see: ccs-knowledge-map); however, student turnover has left the project with several outstanding tasks for which we would benefit from DSI’s Open Source Internship program.
Internship Tasks:
Our project would benefit from tasks in three areas - coding/ feature development, data analysis, and documentation. However, not all are required for the internship.
--Coding & Development: We have a list of backlog coding updates that need to be completed, ranging from minor improvements, e.g., fixing navigation, to feature development, e.g., integrating map visualizations. The log can be accessed here: KM Backlog (we are converting items from Notion). Key priorities include improving UI responsiveness and enhancing interactivity in visualizations.
--Data Analysis: We want to improve our measures of representativeness. The current approach uses distributional comparisons across geographic units (e.g., census tracts, counties) to determine how well the survey sample reflects the broader population. However, this does not account for the sample size. We should improve this to warn users of low N or augment the model by incorporating uncertainty estimates or confidence intervals to indicate the reliability of representativeness scores. The approach can be found here:
See: Qi, Miao, Owen Cahan, Morgan A. Foreman, Daniel M. Gruen, Amar K. Das, and Kristin P. Bennett. "Quantifying representativeness in randomized clinical trials using machine learning fairness metrics." JAMIA open 4, no. 3 (2021): ooab077.
--Documentation & Open-Source Readiness: We must ensure Knowledge Map’s repository follows open-source best practices to make the project open-source. Our project would benefit from evaluating those practices: GitHub Repository and an overall assessment of code structure, licensing, contributor guidelines, and API documentation. Additionally, we should create onboarding materials for new developers and data users to encourage broader engagement with KM.
Completing these would help enhance the accessibility and usability of the tool for researchers, policymakers, and community organizations, enabling them to make data-driven decisions with a clearer understanding of their data and its ability to represent all community members. This work would also strengthen the infrastructure of KM, ensuring it can be maintained and expanded upon in the future.
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Institutional Statements:
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Equal Employment Opportunity Statement:
UW-Madison is an Equal Employment, Equal Access Employer committed to increasing the diversity of our workforce.
Institutional Statement on Diversity:
Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for UW-Madison. We value the contributions of each person and respect the profound ways their identity, culture, background, experience, status, abilities, and opinion enrich the university community. We commit ourselves to the pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, outreach, and diversity as inextricably linked goals.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison fulfills its public mission by creating a welcoming and inclusive community for people from every background-people who as students, faculty, and staff serve Wisconsin and the world.
For more information on diversity and inclusion on campus, please visit: diversity.wisc.edu
Accommodation Statement:
If you need to request an accommodation because of a disability, you can find information about how to make a request at the following website:https://employeedisabilities.wisc.edu/disability-accommodation-information-for-applicants/
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