Full-Time Data Science Mentors
Data Science for Social Good Summer Fellowship
Carnegie Mellon University
The Data Science for Social Good Fellowship is a summer program to train aspiring data scientists to work on machine learning and data science projects with social impact. Working closely with governments and nonprofits, fellows take on real-world problems in education, health, energy, public safety, transportation, economic development, international development, and more. For three months they learn, hone, and apply their data science/ML/AI, analytical, and coding skills, collaborate in a fast-paced atmosphere, and learn from mentors coming from industry and academia.
Data Science/ML/AI Mentors are a critical component of the Fellowship. Mentors work full-time for 12-weeks at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with dedicated teams of fellows and provide hands-on technical mentoring and data science expertise to the projects. Each mentor leads (typically 2 or 3) teams of Fellows (3-4 people each) and serves as a project lead and technical adviser. Each Mentor is teamed up with a Project Manager who leads the relationship with the project partner as well as makes sure the team is working well together and moving forward. Mentors also help us teach workshops and tutorials over the summer and are an integral part of the organizing team.
What will you do?
- Mentor students and recent graduates working on applied data science projects;
- Coordinate with government and non-profit partners, including scoping, ongoing updates, field trials & evaluation, and eventual implementation & deployment;
- Provide technical leadership and support on applied data science projects;
- Help students and recent graduates overcome technical challenges in projects and build new skills;
- Review technical project work to ensure the highest quality deliverables for project partners;
- Work closely with Project Manager and senior staff to adjust project schedules, scope, and deadline and identify when teams need additional support;
- Coach fellows on effectively communicating complex technical information to a general audience;
- Ensure effective documentation and version control of project artifacts and code.
What are we looking for?
An ideal mentor has a strong technical background, typically PhD (in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Quantitative Social Sciences, or Public Policy) and several years of industry/government experience. We want mentors to have real-world data science/ML experience as well as experience in leading teams and working with students and industry/government partners. Basically, we’re looking for experienced, smart, and passionate people who want to make a social impact working with Fellows and our project partners full-time over the summer. We’ve worked with different companies in the past to provide opportunities for their senior data scientists to take leave for the summer and come work with us. Let us know if that’s something of interest.
In past years, we’ve had a mix of successful mentors from Industry and Academia (with practical, real-world experience) with PhDs in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Social Science, Economics, and Physics.
- Experience with Python Data Science Toolkit (Pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib, Scikit-Learn, etc.)
- Experience with machine learning, Spark, MapReduce, distributed computing, and AWS or other cloud environments
- At least 5 years of professional experience working in industry, government, non-profit developing real-world data science systems
- Experience with GitHub
- Experience working on social impact projects
- Has a passion for teaching and (ideally) experience being a teacher, instructor, tutor or mentor (is a plus)