Graduate student intern Shiyu Liu explains her research project to Karl Putz, DPI’s associate director of R&D.
Summer 2024 marked the first time DPI’s R&D group hosted its own cohort of interns.
Mutually beneficial collaboration
Embedded with R&D faculty researchers, seven graduate students and 14 local high school students worked on projects using data science to address a public good.
Everyone benefited from the arrangement.
- The faculty got extra help with their research
- The students from the high school program, known as the Summer internship Program for Applied Research and Knowledge Sharing (SPARKS), got a taste of academic research
- In many cases, the graduate students received mentorship from faculty and at the same time learned to mentor the high school students
The SPARKS interns presented their research projects on July 23 to their peers and the graduate R&D interns, as well as visiting students from the National University of Singapore. The graduate interns presented their work on August 7.
The projects tackled a range of topics. SPARKS intern Fiyinfoluwa Akinyemi and graduate intern Rohan Sai Buddhi both worked with UIC researcher Rigel Gjomemo on projects related to mapping electric vehicle charging stations. SPARKS intern Ellen Hsuan and graduate intern Vatsal Mitesh Tailor worked with Marcia Silva, DPI’s associate director of R&D, and Anuj Tiwari, a senior research associate, on remote monitoring of harmful algal blooms in small lakes in Illinois.
SPARKS intern Atiksh Rai’s work will go beyond the summer. He helped postdoctoral research associate Peiyuan Li and Ashish Sharma, DPI’s climate and sustainability lead, to expand their analysis of tree and building heights beyond the city of Chicago to the metropolitan area. Rai will present his research at the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting in January.
Other research projects encompassed online privacy policies, diabetic retinopathy risk assessment, and more.
A little bit of fun
But while the interns worked hard on their projects, they also found time for fun. Two SPARKS interns took a field trip to the Shedd Aquarium, where they worked with UIUC CLIMAS graduate student Priyanka Sharma and Argonne National Laboratory’s Community Research on Climate and Urban Science (CROCUS) project to launch balloons to measure heat, wind, and moisture over Lake Michigan.
On the left: SPARKS interns Carissa Chen and Jack Davis present their work on understanding privacy policies in Mandarin Chinese. On the right: R&D intern Atiksh Rai helps with a CROCUS climate study.
Author: Jeanie Chung