Strong Analytics, a data science consulting and machine learning development firm, is offering a $1,000 (USD) scholarship to secondary and post-secondary students interested in pursuing a career in data science.
Background
At Strong Analytics, we believe that data science empowers us to make positive change across many domains, from health, to education, politics, energy, and more.
Our goal with this scholarship is to encourage motivated students to engage with data science projects and learn the tools and techniques to enable them to make positive impact through data. These projects can be on any topic, though they must use publicly-available, open-access data.
We founded Strong after earning our PhD's in Cognitive Science and Neuroscience at Northwestern University. We are incredibly grateful to the educators and mentors who pushed us to learn and challenge ourselves. Indeed, one of our first data science projects that we collaborated on was in a "hackathon" hosted by Northwestern. With this scholarship, we want to give something back by helping students and giving them an opportunity to sharpen their skills with "real world" projects outside of the classroom.
The student(s) who submit(s) the top project by the deadline below will be awarded a one-time scholarship award of $1,000 and have their work shared with the world on our website (with their permission, see below)!
Prizes Awarded
$1,000 (USD)
Deadline
June 1, 2019 at midnight (PST)
Rules & Eligibility
- The project must use publicly-available, open-access data.
- All analyses, visualizations, and reports must be original.
- Students can work individually or as teams.
- Each student or team may only make a single submission.
- All submissions must include the source code and data necessary to reproduce the analysis.
- Submissions must be hosted at a public repository, such as GitHub.
- All applicants must be currently registered as students at a college/university in the United States or Canada.
How to Apply
- Find a publicly-available dataset.
- Choose an interesting research question in the public interest that can be addressed using these data.
- Using the programming language(s) of your choice (e.g., R, Python), analyze, visualize, and interpret the data.
- Code your analysis such that we can re-run it ourselves to reproduce your results and visualizations.
- Create a presentation (up to 20 slides) that clearly outlines your research question, methods, and findings.
- Submit your presentation as a PDF and a link to your project's reproducible source code repository to contact@strong.io by the deadline above.
Award Criteria
Projects will be assigned an overall score by all three partners at Strong based on the following criteria:
- Creativity: Is the question interesting? Is the approach novel?
- Rigor: Are the methods used appropriate for the problem? Did the author come up with a error-free, thoughtful solution?
- Clarity: Are the questions, methods, and findings clearly communicated? Is the source code readable?
- Reproducibility: Can we reproduce your solution using the data and code provided?
We will consider the current level of education of the student in assessing each of these criteria.
Terms
Strong Analytics will not share the names or contact information of applicants. Award winners may choose to opt-out from having their work published on our website. The award will be paid directly to the student, to be used for their education in the manner of their choosing.
About Strong Analytics
Strong Analytics is a data science consulting and machine learning development firm that specializes in machine learning development, big data infrastructure, and using data science and analytics to help companies build smarter products and optimize their operations.
