On June 27, 2024, Public Interest Technology-New England (PIT-NE) held their Summer Institute’s Community Showcase to highlight the PIT work undertaken by 21 undergraduate students from University of Massachusetts Amherst, Boston University, Olin College of Engineering, and Tufts University and community partners from across the state as part of the Impact Technology Fellowship. The event celebrated the culmination of PIT-NE’s innovative full-time, six-week pilot fellowship that combined experiential learning, PIT skill building, mentoring, and professional development to empower a new generation of public interest technologists.
PIT-NE is an emerging consortium of leaders from universities, companies, non-profits, and public sector organizations from New England that are focused on building, training, and empowering a workforce committed to creating and using technology responsibly to benefit society. The Impact Technology Fellowship is PIT-NE’s first complete regional initiative that utilized resources from diverse institutions collaboratively to develop programming that creates a larger impact. UMass Amherst employee, Colette Basiliere is the Executive Director of PIT-NE and Francine Berman, Director of Public Interest Technology and Stuart Rice Honorary Research Professor, UMass Amherst, is co-chair of the PIT-NE Leadership Committee.
The event featured:
- Presentations from six project teams showcasing their innovative PIT work for community partners
- Interactive project demos and opportunities to engage directly with teams
- Q&A sessions with students, contributors, and program staff
- Refreshments and time to network
- View videos of the presentations here
Data Science Projects
- Landmass Use in Longmeadow, MA (MassMutual and Longmeadow Historical Society): Leveraging technology to identify and create data visualizations of historic racist deed restrictions in Longmeadow, MA.
- Racial Bias in News Coverage (NAACP of Massachusetts): Analyzing coverage of Boston’s Black community in the Boston Globe over a decade to assess changes in coverage, sentiment, and demographic representation.
Machine Learning Projects
- SeasonWatch (SeasonWatch, India): A citizen science project to monitor tree phenology in India to understand climate change impacts on seasonal patterns by comparing citizen submitted tree data against the reference database.
- AImpower (AImpower): Benchmarking speech recordings of people who stutter against popular speech recognition models provided by OpenAI, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Otter.AI to analyze the role of technology in marginalizing people who stutter.
Software Engineering Projects
- District 4 App (Boston City Councilor Brian Worrell): Developing a platform for civic engagement and resource access for Boston’s District 4.
- Boston Voter App (Yawu Miller, journalist former senior editor of Bay State Banner): Creating a web application to address the lack of accessible information about voting logistics and candidates in municipal elections in Boston. This is part of Miller’s new venture to establish a non-profit news agency to expand reporting on Massachusetts’s Black and Latino communities.
Background
Public Interest Technology is a new field that focuses on the development and realization of socially responsible solutions to the challenges of a technology-driven world. It serves as a critical foundation for 21st century education for people who create technologies, and for those who work with them, which is all of us. Public Interest Technology–New England is a New England consortium committed to providing a framework for synergistic programming in higher education and workforce development in PIT.
Questions? Contact:
Colette Basiliere, Executive Director, Public Interest Technology New England
cbasiliere@umass.edu