IBM Research: Data Science for a Better World
abernard102@gmail.com 2016-01-27
Summary:
"Saška Mojsilović led the creation of the Ebola Open Data Jam in 2014. A community effort which helped to identify, inventory and classify all open data sources related to the Ebola outbreak, it provided governments, aid agencies and researchers with free and open access to valuable open data related to the epidemic on the platform EbolaData.org. Kush Varshney is a data ambassador for DataKind, an organization that brings together leading data scientists with high impact social organizations to better analyze, model and visualize data in the service of humanity. He has led projects with NGO GiveDirectly and Simpa Networks. GiveDirectly delivers cash directly to extremely poor villagers in Kenya and Uganda. Using a combination of volunteers, satellite imagery, image processing and a machine learning-based algorithm, the team trained a system to identify the poorest villages based on the proportion of thatch to metal roofed homes, a simple yet effective proxy for poverty. A resulting paper on the research was awarded the best social good paper at the 2014 KDD Conference ... Today, their sense of purpose has led to the founding of IBM’s Social Good Fellowship Program. This new initiative invites graduate and post-doctoral students to apply their computer science and statistical skills to projects that address important social issues, such as health care, equality, the environment, sustainability, disaster response and more. As co-directors of the program, Saška and Kush bring a tremendous amount of knowledge, relationships and experience. They’re what you might call hands-on philanthropic scientists, who will pair students and scholars with IBM scientists and partner organizations to tackle some of the biggest challenges in our world ..."