D2K Capstone Student Teams
In the D2K Capstone program, interdisciplinary teams of students (advanced undergrads, professional master's students and Ph.D.) work on a semester-long real-world project sponsored by one of our D2K Affiliate Members.
Click the icons below to learn more about their projects, watch video presentations and interact with the team in their live virtual booths at 5:30pm on May 5.
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Team Name: Autograder
Sponsor: OpenStax
- Project Description: In order to effectively and quickly grade free-response questions in various subject domains, our team used Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning to build a response auto-grading algorithm based on the OpenStax Tutor platform data.
- Team Members:
- • John Chen (Ph.D. student, Computer Science)
- • Shijie Fan (Computer Science ‘22)
- • Yuchen Gu (Computer Science ‘22)
- • Yidi Wang (Computer Science ‘22)
- • Yuan Yang (First Year M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering)
- Sponsor Mentor:Debshila Basu Mallick, Ph.D.
- Faculty Mentors:
- • Prof. Richard Baraniuk, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
- • Dr. Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
(Rice faculty and students only)
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Team Name: Customer Support Chats
Sponsor: bill.com
- Project Description: Our project aims to build a model which predicts a real-time probability that a customer will have a positive experience during live customer support chats, as the conversation goes on. To achieve this, we also perform sentiment analysis as well as topic modeling.
- Team Members:
- • Jacky Li (Computer Science (Masters) ‘21)
- • Chris McCarthy (Statistics, Mathematical Economic Analysis ‘21)
- • Daniel Tang (Computer Science ‘21)
- • Ray William (Computer Science ‘22)
- • Berk Alp Yakici (Computer Science ‘22)
- Sponsor Mentor:
- • Natalie Berestovsky - Director, Data Science
- • Stefano Romano - Machine Learning Engineer
- • Han Shi - Software Engineer
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Arko Barman, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
(Rice faculty and students only)
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Team Name: Customer Feedback Team
bill.com
- Project Description: The goal of our project is to build data science tools to help the product management team at Bill.com understand what types of users like and dislike the product.
- Team Members:
- • Michael Price (Statistics ‘21)
- • Christopher Lee (Computer Science ‘22)
- • XIn Hao (Computer Science ‘22)
- • Lily Liu (Computer Science, Computational and Applied Mathematics, and Mathematics ‘21)
- • Yang Mi (Masters, Computer Science)
- Sponsor Mentor:
- • Stefano Romano - Machine Learning Engineer
- • Han Shi - Software Engineer
- • Natalie Berestovsky - Director, Data Science
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
(Rice faculty and students only)
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Team Name: Cardiac Signals
Sponsor: Texas Children's Hospital
- Project Description: Babies with congenital heart defects are at high risk of cardiac arrest events, which can be challenging to predict. To overcome this, we develop an autoencoder-based detection method of cardiac signal instability to act as an early warning sign of cardiac events.
- Team Members:
- • Aneel Damaraju (ECE/Physics ‘21)
- • Frank Yang (ECE/Physics ‘21)
- • Kunal Rai (ECE ‘21)
- • Chiraag Kaushik (ECE ‘21)
- • Tucker Reinhart (ECE/CS ‘21)
- • Andrew Pham (ECE/CS ‘21)
- Sponsor Mentor:
- • Dr. Sebastian Acosta, PhD - Research faculty member in the Department of Pediatrics-Cardiology at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital
- • Dr. Mubbasheer Ahmed, MD - Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
- • Dr. Parag Jain, MD, FAAP - Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
(Rice faculty and students only)
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Team Name: CSI Predict
Sponsor: CSI Compressco
- Project Description: CSI Compressco, a company that provides natural gas compression services, operates a fleet of compressors that experience costly unexpected shutdowns on a regular basis. The goal of the project is to predict these shutdowns in advance using compressor sensor data in order to give CSI Compressco the opportunity to prevent the shutdowns before they occur.
- Team Members:
- • Bradford Johnson (Computational & Applied Math ‘21)
- • Baekjun Kim (Professional masters Computer Science)
- • Artun Bayer (Electrical & Computer Engineering, Undergraduate non-senior)
- • Jasper Huang (Statistics ‘21)
- • James McNaney (Masters student, Electrical & Computer Engineering)
- Sponsor Mentor:
- • Claudia Malibran, Technology Enabled Optimization Manager
- • David Locke, Fleet Reliability Center Manager
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Arko Barman, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
(Rice faculty and students only)
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Team Name: Team Heat
Project Sponsor: City of Houston
Financial Sponsor: BP
- Project Description: We collaborated with the City of Houston to address rising extreme heat in specific neighborhoods in Houston. Our project finds actionable ways for the city to reduce heat in the most socially vulnerable communities using the city’s data from the Heat Watch volunteer project and a myriad of other sources in our environment.
- Team Members:
- • Caleigh Page (Statistics ‘21)
- • Mason Reece (Political Science and Social Policy Analysis ‘22)
- • Sai Sankeerth Sarvade (Professional Masters - Physics and Astronomy ‘22)
- • Yufei Shen (Electrical and Computer Engineering ‘22)
- Project Sponsor:
- • Marissa Aho - Chief Resilience Officer
- • Laura Patino - Recovery Chief of Staff
- • Ryan Slattery - Recovery Officer
- • Stephen Costello - Chief Recovery Officer
- D2K Affiliate Financial Sponsorship provided by BP:
- • Ken Odegard, HPC Computer Scientist
- • Anar Yusifov, HPC Senior Computational Scientist
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
(Rice faculty and students only)
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Team Name: Houston Equity
Project Sponsor: City of Houston
Financial Sponsor: BP
- Project Description: Houston's commitment to social equity and progress requires a deep and nuanced understanding of how many demographic comparisons interweave geographically. Our project seeks to help the City of Houston discretize and understand these trends, with easy to grasp interactive visualizations.
- Team Members:
- • Elijah Lipkin (Statistics ‘21)
- • Jason Gardner (Statistics, Sport Data Analytics, Data Science Minor ‘21)
- • Kelly Dong (Civil and Environmental Engineering ‘21)
- • Manling Xi (Professional Master Student of Statistics ‘21)
- • Zac Zalles (Computational and Applied Math ‘21)
- Project Sponsor:
- • Marissa Aho - Chief Resilience Officer
- • Laura Patino - Recovery Chief of Staff
- • Ryan Slattery - Recovery Officer
- • Stephen Costello - Chief Recovery Officer
- D2K Affiliate Financial Sponsorship provided by BP:
- • Ken Odegard, HPC Computer Scientist
- • Anar Yusifov, HPC Senior Computational Scientist
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
(Rice faculty and students only)
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Team Name: HFD
Sponsor: Houston Fire Department (HFD)
- Project Description: Analysis and optimization of Houston's emergency response fleet (ambulances, fire trucks) to meet the modern emergency demands.
- Team Members:
- • Claire Wang (CAAM ‘21)
- • Sophia Huang (STAT/MTEC ‘21)
- • Victoria Mao (STAT/MTEC ‘21)
- • Marcus Martinez (STAT ‘21)
- • Tianqi Ma (Applied Physics (PhD) ‘21)
- Sponsor Mentor: Ruy Lozano, Assistant Fire Chief, Houston Fire Department
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
(Rice faculty and students only)
Vector Art Credits Owl: Designed by Elsystudio / Freepik Hat: Designed by macrovector / Freepik
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Team name: OpenStax OpenSyllabus
Sponsor: OpenStax
- Project Description: We utilized an NLP pipeline that we created to convert unstructured and varied syllabus text from the OpenSyllabus dataset into a standardized, structured format. With the standardized syllabi, we analyzed Texas Higher Education pedagogy, especially focusing on trends in experiential learning.
- Team Members:
- • Nicholas Glaze (Electrical and Computer Engineering ‘22)
- • Steven Feng (Statistics ‘22)
- • Timothy Newton (Computer Science ‘21)
- • Yikun Li ( Master of Electrical Engineering ‘22)
- Sponsor Mentor:Debshila Basu Mallick, Ph.D., OpenStax
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Arko Barman, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
(Rice faculty and students only)
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Team Name: Stroke Chatbot
Sponsor: UTHealth
- Project Description: We developed an iOS and an Android app to chat daily with patients recently recovered from a stroke, collect vital information and predict the risk for a recurrent stroke.
- Team Members:
- • Lebing Chen (Physics, 4th-year doctoral student)
- • Weiqi Lu (Physics, 4th-year doctoral student)
- • Xinglin Wang (Chemical and Biomolecular, 4th-year doctoral student)
- Sponsor Mentor:
- • Dr. Xiaoqian Jiang, Professor at the UTHealth School of Biomedical Informatics (SBMI)
- • Dr. Sean Savitz, Professor, UT Health Science Center Houston
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Arko Barman, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
(Rice faculty and students only)
Data Science Student Teams (Non-Affiliate Sponsored)
In this Data Science Capstone course, student teams work on self-selected data science projects from a variety of domains. All projects were conducted using publicly available data.
Click each icon to learn more about their projects, watch video presentations and interact with the team in their live virtual booths at 5:30pm on May 5.
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Team Name: Countrics
- Project Description: The goal of this project is to visualize and predict relationships between world development indicators in the World Bank.
- Team Members:
- • Farouk Badawi (ELEC ‘22)
- • Robert Chen (ELEC ‘22)
- • Laura Goon (COMP, DSCI minor ‘21)
- • Will Tobin (ELEC ‘22)
- • Jim Zhang (ELEC ‘22)
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Arko Barman, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
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Team Name: COVID Trackers
- Project Description: Through our project, we will investigate how sentiments expressed about the pandemic on social media interact with COVID-19 outcomes (specifically infection rates), and whether they are an effective predictor of future outcomes.
- Team Members:
- • Dustin Belsha (ELEC with Data Science & Systems specialization ‘22)
- • Justin Coleman (ELEC with Data Science & Systems specialization ‘22)
- • Maya Chamberlain (ELEC with Data Science & Systems specialization ‘22)
- • Will Ledig (Computer Science, DSCI minor ‘21)
- • Sam Ramirez (ELEC with Data Science & Systems specialization + ENGI Minor ‘21)
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Arko Barman, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
Introductory Data Science Student Teams
In the Introduction to Data Science course, Rice students from all majors learn the fundamentals of data science while working on teams to solve real data science challenges, design a data science pipeline, and derive valuable insights from data. All projects were conducted using publicly available data.
Click the icons to watch presentation videos of each project.
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Team Name: Team Airbnb
- Project Description: Our project seeks to optimize the experience of Airbnb hosts in order to allow them to price their listings most appropriately to maximize earnings. We have conducted data analysis of Austin, TX Airbnb listings in order to explore the differences in host classifications and the characteristics that most impact an Airbnb listing's price.
- Team Members:
- • Alana Pickens (Economics ‘23)
- • Franklin Briones (Bioengineering, ‘21)
- • Max Boekelmann (Sport Management ‘21)
- • Daniel Cufino (Computer Science ‘24)
- • Archit Chabbi (Bioengineering ‘24)
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
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Team Name: "The Group with 6 People"
- Project Description: We examined video game data to identify the best-selling video game genres, to determine the relationship between video game ratings and sales, and to explore the relationship between critic and user scores.
- Team Members:
- • Bertrand Odinet (Bioengineering ‘22)
- • Edelawit Negash (Mathematical Economic Analysis ‘24)
- • Joel Hrncir (School of Humanities ‘24)
- • Katherine Cheng (Economics ‘24)
- • Leyah Mathew (Economics ‘24)
- • Sanjana Krishnan (Psychology ‘21)
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
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Basketball Aficionados
- Project Description: Our team is analyzing the relationship between key season statistics for nine National Basketball Association (NBA) teams. Our goal is to identify the variables that most strongly predict a team’s win/loss percentage.
- Team Members:
- • Jacob Coyle (Computer Science ‘24)
- • Melissa Carmona (Sociology ‘23)
- • Valeria Martinez (Statistics ‘24)
- • Claire Noel (Political Science, Social Policy Analysis ‘22)
- • Eric Rodriguez (Political Science ‘21)
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
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Team San Antonio Policing
- Project Description: Our project examines the Stanford Open Policing Dataset, a national repository of traffic stop and search data, to examine racial disparities in policing.
- Team Members:
- • Spoorthi Kamepalli (SOPA & HART ‘21)
- • Varsha Varghese (SOPA, ‘21)
- • Alexandria Goodson (CAAM ‘21)
- • Ayaka Hoshida (MECH ‘24)
- • Abayomi Dada (Cog Sci ‘23)
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE
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Team Spotify
- Project Description: Our project looks at a Spotify datasets from 1921-2021 with features including danceability and acousticness. We explored several outliers in this dataset and used these Spotify-defined features to answer questions about song popularity and genre makeup.
- Team Members:
- • Natalie Goddard (Materials Science and Nanoengineering ‘21)
- • Nathan McCoslin (Political Science, Asian Studies ‘22)
- • Franco Gomez (Mathematical Economic Analysis ‘24)
- • Andrei Mitrofan (Bioengineering ‘23)
- • Hanna Gratch (Sociology ‘21)
- Faculty Mentors: Dr. Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab and ECE