Sample Projects

Project Name: Summer Experience Award

Description: Proposed four options for a domestic summer award for students on financial aid to pursue unpaid summer experiences in traditionally underfunded sectors (e.g., arts, non-profits, government). Modeled uptake and cost of each option by analyzing Summer Activities Surveys from CIPE and estimating cost of living.  Findings were presented to the Financial Aid Working Group, which includes the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, and ultimately led to the implementation of the Domestic Summer Award (DSA), now referred to as the Summer Experience Award.  The DSA was expanded in 2020 to cover Yale Summer Session courses, and in total almost 20% of all summer activities were funded by the DSA.

Project Name: Carbon Charge Impact Analysis

Description: Provided analytical support to the Yale Carbon Charge Project to determine the impact the Carbon Charge has had on university-wide admissions since its inception in 2017. Quantitative project involving heavy data-cleaning and a variety of statistical methods such as propensity-score matching. Findings ultimately led to a restructuring of the Yale Carbon Charge.

Project Name: Yale Center for Research Computing - Strategic Analysis of High Performance Computing (HPC) Delivery Models 

Description:  Built a financial model to help assess the research computing requirements at Yale.  Compared the financial and non-financial considerations to meet Yale’s HPC needs using various service models: on premise, private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud.

Project Name: Undergraduate Math Persistence

Description: Investigated persistence and pipeline attrition in the undergraduate mathematics major, particularly attrition of underrepresented minorities. Found that choice of introductory courses, grades and overall experience were correlated with persistence in the major. Presented to the Math Department DEIB Committee to facilitate an active discussion. Findings supported a restructuring of the introductory course sequence for the mathematics major.

Project name: COVID Lab Productivity

Description: Analyzed the effect of COVID on research lab productivity especially compared to pre-pandemic. Involved (1) meeting with members across the university to understand available data and limitations, (2) data manipulation and cleaning, and (3) distilling our findings into a succinct presentation. Considered nine metrics as measures of activity, ranging from grants and publications to animal census data. Findings were presented to the Provost and Vice Provost for Research as well as other senior leaders.