It was a busy start to the summer for eight UMass Amherst undergraduates who participated in Public Interest Technology New England’s (PIT-NE) innovative Impact Technology Fellowship. The full-time, six-week fellowship combined experiential learning, public interest technology skill building, mentoring, and professional development to empower a new generation of public interest technologists. Boston University’s Spark! facilitated technical work and PIT-NE organized programming including professional development workshops to grow communication and networking skills, tech talks to learn about data visualizations, Git, and more, and PIT seminars where local leaders shared their work and tools for designing, developing, and deploying technology in responsible ways.
A total of 21 fellows worked in teams on six different software engineering, machine learning, and data science projects in collaboration with community partners from a variety of sectors. In addition to the students from UMass, teams included undergraduates from Boston University, Olin College, and Tufts University. Each day, the teams came together at Boston University’s Center for Computing and Data Sciences to work on messy, real-world problems under the guidance of their mentors and advisors from Boston University’s Spark! community.
To conclude the program, each team presented at the PIT-NE Summer Institute’s Community Showcase, highlighting their projects’ technical and social impact achievements. Following the presentations, community members had a chance to demo projects and talk more in-depth with each team about their work.
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.
Watch presentations from the 2024 Community Showcase here.
QUOTES FROM 2024 FELLOWS
The fellowship provided me with opportunities to work on a high-impact project, which helped me enhance my technical skills and apply them to real-world problems. I connected with industry leaders, mentors, and peers, which broadened my professional network and opened doors for future collaborations and career opportunities…Ultimately, the Impact Technology Fellowship has been a pivotal step in my career, aligning perfectly with my aspirations to drive positive change through technology and innovation. – Rachel, UMass Amherst
This program offered more than what a standard internship could offer. It offered me a purpose, especially with what I want to do with my career. I made some really good friends who are in the same field as me and are equally passionate about PIT. – Nikhila, UMass Amherst