Data for Good

Service, outreach, and community-engaged data science

Data for Good, by Design

Data science can change policy, shape narratives, and support communities—not just produce papers.
My work in data for good focuses on three pillars:

  • STATCOM – community-engaged consulting with non-profits
  • MIDAS – student leadership and cross-campus programming
  • CAIA – trustworthy AI for cancer care

10+
years of community-engaged data work

Dozens
of projects with non-profit & public partners

Across
education, public health, youth advocacy, and oncology

Statistics in the Community (STATCOM) 🤝

Pro bono consulting for community partners

As president of Statistics in the Community (STATCOM) at the University of Michigan, I helped coordinate teams of graduate students providing free statistical consulting to non-profit and community organizations.

Projects included:

  • Community health perceptions after the Flint Water Crisis
  • Trans youth advocacy, including program evaluation and measurement
  • Food access and food deserts, quantifying gaps and evaluating interventions
  • Program evaluation and dashboarding for youth-serving organizations

Statistics in the Community Logo

Statistics in the Community

STATCOM @ U-M connects graduate students with community partners who need analytical support but lack in-house data science capacity.

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Why this model works
  • Community partners get access to expertise they couldn’t otherwise afford
  • Students learn to work with real-world, messy data and real constraints
  • Projects often seed long-term collaborations and follow-up work

STATCOM in Action 🎥

Highlight: Starr Commonwealth 🌱

A collaboration with Starr Commonwealth focused on understanding program outcomes and improving decision-making:

  • Building a Shiny-based dashboard to explore key indicators over time
  • Creating interpretable visual summaries for non-technical stakeholders
  • Supporting continuous evaluation, not just a one-off report

MIDAS Student Leadership Team 🎓

Building a campus-wide data for good community

The MIDAS Student Leadership Team (Michigan Institute for Data Science) brings together students from across campus who care about:

  • Data science education and training
  • Community-building and mentorship
  • Projects with clear public-good or social-impact goals

My contributions have included:

  • Designing student-facing programming (seminars, workshops, mixers)
  • Advocating for inclusive, accessible pathways into data science
  • Connecting students with real-world projects that mirror STATCOM’s impact model
Through MIDAS, STATCOM, and CAIA

I’m working toward an ecosystem where students can move seamlessly between: - learning core methods,
- applying them in community settings, and
- pushing on the frontier of AI for health.

Cancer AI Alliance (CAIA) 🧬

Trustworthy AI for precision oncology

The Cancer AI Alliance (CAIA) focuses on building clinically meaningful, trustworthy AI tools for cancer research and care.

My work within CAIA emphasizes:

  • Developing and validating AI/ML models for precision oncology
  • Studying how AI-predicted quantities can be used responsibly in downstream statistical inference
  • Designing workflows so models are transparent, reproducible, and aligned with real clinical needs
Principles that guide this work
  • Rigor – robust validation, including out-of-distribution performance
  • Transparency – clear documentation of models, data, and limitations
  • Equity – attention to bias, representation, and downstream impacts
  • Longevity – infrastructure that can be maintained beyond a single grant

Data for Public Good Symposium 📣

Bringing methods and impact together

The Data for Public Good Symposium highlights projects that blend methodological innovation with real-world impact. My involvement has included:

  • Presenting work on community-engaged data science and prediction-powered inference
  • Showcasing collaborations with non-profits, public health partners, and clinical teams
  • Helping connect students and researchers to data-for-good opportunities

Talks & Media 🎥

A sampling of additional talks and media related to data for good, public communication, and applied data science:

Want to collaborate?

If you’re interested in:

  • launching a STATCOM-style initiative,
  • connecting students with data for good projects, or
  • exploring responsible AI workflows in cancer or public health,

feel free to get in touch — I’m always excited to brainstorm new collaborations at the intersection of data, impact, and community.

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