The Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute (HDSI) awards 32 students with research scholarships under its foundational program, the HDSI Undergraduate Research Scholarship Program. The program offers a unique opportunity for all UCSD undergraduate researchers to expand their research capabilities and delve into cutting-edge projects with mentorship from leading researchers in their domain. The awardees’ and mentors are drawn from 10 departments across campus, highlighting the collaborations taking place within the undergraduate research community.
These 22 diverse projects foster creativity, innovation, and contribute to the advancement of data science.
A list of the projects, awardees, and mentors:
- Big Data for Small Devices: Towards the Discovery of Efficient Algorithms for Portable Brain-Computer-Interfaces
- Awarded Researcher Names: Aidan Truel, Joelle Faybishenko
- Majors: Mathematics – Computer Science and Cognitive Science – Machine Learning, Computer Science – Bioinformatics
- Mentor Name: Alessandro D’Amico
- Bumble as a Feminist Dating App: Inclusion, Safety Discourse, and Surveillance
- Awarded Researcher Name: Somalea Hayward
- Major: Sociology
- Mentor: Kathryne Metcalf
- Causal Discovery for Spatiotemporal Data
- Awarded Researcher Name: Kun Wang
- Major: Mathematics-Computer Science
- Mentor Names: Sumanth Varambally, Rose Yu, Yian Ma
- Characterizing Formation of Evaporation Ducts formed by the Capping Inversion of the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer
- Awarded Researcher Names: Keenan Serrao, Pranav Sehgal, Jason Huynh
- Majors: Data Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics
- Mentor Name: Peter Gerstoft
(Pictured left to right: Keenan Serrao, Pranav Sehgal, Jason Huynh)
- Classifying Undirected Human Behavior with Semi-Supervised Learning and Interpretation
- Awarded Researcher Name: Chi Kiet Chou
- Major: Mathematics-Computer Science
- Mentor: Zhanqi Zhang
- Frequency Networks in Blood Glucose Data
- Awarded Researcher Name: Nir Reiter
- Major: Biology with Specialization in Bioinformatics
- Mentor Name: Benjamin L. Smarr
- Human and Computational Detection and Perception of AI Voices
- Awarded Researcher Name: Mia Khattar
- Major: Linguistics
- Mentor Name: Will Styler, Ph.D.
- Identifying and Alleviating Biases in Facial Expression Recognition Systems
- Awarded Researcher Name: Miguel Monares
- Majors: (1) Math-CS and (2) Cognitive Science (Machine Learning & Neural Computation)
- Mentor Name: Virginia de Sa
- Improved Machine Translation for CN-EN Novels through Targeted Dictionary Substitutions of Idioms and a Multi-Word-Phrase Synonym-Focused Automated Metric
- Awarded Researcher Names: Lisa Liu, Ryan Liu, Angela Tsai
- Majors: Computer Science and ICAM (Double Major), Computer Science, Math-Computer Science
- Mentor Name: Jingbo Shang
(Pictured left to right: Lisa Liu, Angela Tsai)
- IoTAuditor: Debugging the Fine-grained Internal States of Blackbox IoT Devices using Side-channel Information
- Awarded Researcher Name: Tuan Minh Tran
- Major: Computer Science
- Mentor Name: Haojian Jin
- Machine Learning Models for Acoustic Species Identification of Avian Biodiversity
- Awarded Researcher Name: Samantha Prestrelski
- Major: Math-Computer Science
- Mentor Name: Ryan Kastner
(Pictured: Samantha Prestrelski)
- Modeling the Context-Dependent Decision-Making in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex (mPFC) using Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)
- Awarded Researcher Name: Jiaqi Zhang
- Majors: Cognitive Science spec. in ML and NC; Math/CS
- Mentor Name: Kay Tye
(Pictured: Jiaqi (Kevin) Zhang)
- Monte Carlo Simulation and Pretrial Risk Assessment Algorithms
- Awarded Researcher Name: Sukham Sidhu
- Major: Economics
- Mentor Name: David Arnold
- Multi-Ancestry Gene Expression Prediction to Identify Novel Genes Regulating Complex Traits Specifically in Individuals of African Descent
- Awarded Researcher Name: Kai Akamatsu
- Major: Biology with Specialization in Bioinformatics
- Mentor Name: Tiffany Amariuta
- Multimodal Analysis on the Implementation of Machine Learning Models to Assist Clinical Decision Making
- Awarded Researcher Name: Terrindeep Sandhu
- Major: Engineering Physics
- Mentors: Hui Xin Ng, Dr. Lisa Eyler
(Pictured: Terrindeep Sandhu)
- Neural Network based Lyapunov Function
- Awarded Researcher Name: Haohan Zou
- Majors: Mathematics – Computer Science
- Mentor Name: Yuanyuan Shi
- Predicting the Outcome of Supreme Court Cases of the Roberts Court
- Awarded Researcher Name: Baraa Zekeria
- Major: B.S. Political Science/Data Analytics
- Mentor Name: Umberto Mignozzetti
- Sea Star Population Threats and Predictions
- Awarded Researcher Names: Faline Le, Kristina Nguyen
- Majors: Faline: Data Science, Kristina: Marine Biology
- Mentor Name: Jordan Dinardo
- Sex Differences in Sleep Metrics as Measured by a Commercial Wearable Device
- Awarded Researcher Name: Saara Kriplani
- Major: Bioengineering: Bioinformatics
- Mentor Name: Benjamin L. Smarr
(Pictured: Saara Kriplani)
- Soil Prediction using Gaussian Processes and Bayesian Optimization for Large-scale Infrastructure Design
- Awarded Researcher Names: Nathaphat Taleongpong, Gahn Wuwong
- Majors: Data Science, Data Science
- Mentor Name: Shabnam J. Semnani
- Speech Emotion Recognition
- Awarded Researcher Names: Gabriel Cha, Arman Rahman, JunHee Hwang
- Majors: Data Science, Data Science, Data Science
- Mentor Name: Justin Eldridge
- Using Instance Image Segmentation for Mouse Brain Tomography Reconstruction
- Awarded Researcher Names: Yuxuan Zhang, Jiesen Zhang
- Majors: Data Science & Math-Computer Science, Data Science & Cognitive Science
- Mentor Name: Marco Uytiepo
To learn more about these projects, check out our social media. We will be featuring the students and their projects in November 2023.