Team Name: BakerRipley 

Sponsor: BakerRipley

Project Title: Harris County Social Vulnerability Index

• Project Description: To aid non-profit Baker Ripley in efficient allocation of time and resources, we created a Harris County Social Vulnerability Index, a measure of how vulnerable different communities are to various social factors in comparison to each other. Our results are displayed on a dashboard that can be easily explored and interpreted by decision makers within Baker Ripley.

• Team Members:
• • Ross Bechtel, Undergraduate Senior, Computer Science
• • Daniel Cho, Professional Masters Student, Computer Science
• • Julie Street, Undergraduate Senior, Cognitive Science
• • Griffin Coccari, Undergraduate Senior, Asian Studies
• • Gabriel Meriano, Undergraduate Senior, Computer Science

• Sponsor Mentors:
• • Kristen Deppe, Assistant Director, Research & Evaluation, BakerRipley
• • Travis Harry, Data Scientist, BakerRipley

• Faculty Mentor:Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab, Rice University

Team Name: Breathe Easy

Sponsor: Baylor College of Medicine

Project Title: Exploring High Risk Factors in an Animal Model of SIDS

• Project Description: By experimentally inducing a hypothesized Sudden Infant Death Syndrome-like phenomenon in mice, the Russell Ray Lab in the Baylor College of Medicine is collecting ECG and breathing data from genetically engineered mice to explore potential risk factors that make the mice more susceptible to expiration. Our job as team Breathe Easy is to discover signatures in the cardiopulmonary data that can help uncover the factors that contribute to higher susceptibility towards expiration in the mice.

• Team Members:
• • Akash Karanam, Undergraduate Junior, Computer Science, Mathematics
• • Ishtdeep Singh, Professional Masters Student, Computer Science
• • Tejeshwine Viswanathan, Professional Masters Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Sydney Le, Professional Masters Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Lucas Atayde, Undergraduate Senior, Computer Science
• • Mahmoud Al-Madi, Undergraduate Junior, Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Sponsor Mentors:
• • Russell S. Ray, Assistant Professor and McNair Scholar, Department of Neuroscience, BCM
• • Christopher Ward, Assistant Professor, Department of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics, BCM

• Faculty Mentor: Genevera Allen, Associate Professor, Rice University, Founder and Faculty Director, the D2K Lab

Team Name: COVID Jigsaw

Sponsor: Ray Simar

Project Title: COVID Jigsaw

• Project Description: We seek to understand how the next coronavirus variant will affect us by studying the impact of vaccinations and government involvement on previous variant surges.

• Team Members:
• • Brian Hoepfl, Professional Masters student, Computer Science
• • Cynthia Chen, Undergraduate Senior, Computational & Applied Math
• • Haijilao Lu, Professional Masters student, Statistics
• • Min Hung Shih, Professional Masters student, Computer Science
• • Nathan Powell, Undergraduate Junior, Computer Science
• • Tasfia Azim, PhD student, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

• Sponsor Mentors:
• • Ray Simar, Professor in the Practice, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University

• Faculty Mentor: Arko Barman, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab, Rice University

Team Name: Free Spirit

Project Title: A Continual Fight against a Dangerous Infodemic: COVID-19 Fake News Detection

• Project Description: Building upon existing works in the research area of fake news detection, our main objective is to achieve better prediction accuracy than a generic-purpose fake news detector by exploiting the particularity of COVID-related news data and employing state-of-the-art ML and deep learning (DL) models specifically tuned to work with COVID-related information.

• Team Members:
• • Kai-Po Lin, Professional Masters Student, Computer Science
• • Wu Angela Li, Professional Masters Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Durga Parulekar, Professional Masters Student, Computer Science
• • Cynthia Zhu, Professional Masters Student, Data Science

• Faculty Mentor:Ethan Yeh, Adjunct Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University

Team Name: HFD

Sponsor: Houston Fire Department

Project Title: Modeling Fire Risk in the City of Houston

• Project Description: This semester, Team HFD has collected, compiled, and cleaned a variety of data sources that have allowed us to develop a comprehensive database of every property in Houston along with its fire history since 2005. Using this database, we have gained valuable insights regarding fire inspections and estimated the fire risk likelihood of properties in Houston, which will ultimately allow the Houston Fire Department to more effectively inspect buildings and prevent fires.

• Team Members:
• • Joshua Washington, Undergraduate Senior, Computer Science, Computational & Applied Math
• • Ziyana Samanani, Undergraduate Senior, Chemistry
• • Yuxin Gong, Professional Masters student, Data Science
• • Tessa Cannon, Undergraduate Senior, Political Science
• • Annita Chang, Undergraduate Junior, Computer Science
• • Jarrett Prchal, Undergraduate Senior, Mechanical Engineering

• Sponsor Mentors:
• • Leonard Chan, Accreditation Manager, Houston Fire Department

• Faculty Mentor: Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab, Rice University

Team Name: Legal NLP

Project Sponsor: Norton Rose Fulbright

Project Title: Decoding Legal Documents: Natural Language Processing and Text Mining for Information Extraction

• Project Description: The first project in the English language to extract key information from unstructured legal documents, which helps lawyers save time and gain insights into how these documents change throughout the years to make better future decisions.

• Team Members:
• • Tianjun Chen, Professional Masters Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Xinyang Song, Professional Masters Student, Data Science
• • Lucas Tyler, Undergraduate Senior, Mathematical Economic Analysis
• • Aaron Wang, Undergraduate Junior, Computer Science
• • Irpan Yierpan, Undergraduate Junior, Computer Science, Data Science
• • Jincai Zheng, Professional Masters Student, Data Science

• Sponsor Mentors:
• • Zack Barners, Head of Innovation, Norton Rose Fulbright
• • Alexis Collins, Chief Information Officer, Norton Rose Fulbright

• Faculty Mentor: Arko Barman,Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab, Rice University

Team Name: Lone Star

Project Sponsor: Lone Star College

Project Title: Analyzing Texas Higher Education data for strategic planning, financial reporting and benchmarking

• Project Description: The goal of our project is to build a dashboard that will help community colleges across Texas better visualize how their funds are being allocated and build models to see how those allocations affect student achievement.

• Team Members:
• • Junwei Chen, Professional Masters student, Electrical Engineering
• • Keifer Convertino, Undergraduate Senior, Computer Science
• • Manaal Khan, Undergraduate Junior, Computer Science
• • Hadley Kruse, Undergraduate Senior, Economics ‘22
• • Eduardo Landin, Undergraduate Senior, Computer Science, Statistics
• • Madison Bunting, Undergraduate Senior, Operations Research

• Sponsor Mentors:
• • Deseree Probasco, Chief of Staff and Board Liaison, Lone Star College
• • Nyssa Peterson: Data Coordinator, Lone Star College

• Faculty Mentor: Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab, Rice University

Team Name: No Stick No Slip

Sponsor: Shell

Project Title: Detection, Characterization, and Quantification of Stick-Slip in Hydraulic Systems

• Project Description: Stick-slip is when hydraulic systems such as elevators start shaking erratically, which can be dangerous, and currently cannot be measured! Our project is to engineer a measurement system for the amount of stick-slip in pistons, a key piece of hydraulic equipment, so Shell Hydraulics can test different ways to eliminate stick-slip.

• Team Members:
• • Shicong Wang, Professional Masters Student, Computer Science
• • Xuetao Hu, Professional Masters Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Ziqin Shang, Professional Masters Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Sohil Shah, Undergraduate Senior, Mathematical Economic Analysis
• • Zeyuan Zhang, Undergraduate Junior, Computer Science

• Sponsor Mentors:
• • Jennifer Kensler, Consulting Practice Lead in Digital Innovation, Shell
• • Oluwaseyi (Seyi) Ogunsola, Project Leader in the Lubricants Discovery Hub, Shell

• Faculty Mentor: Arko Barman, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab, Rice University

Team Name: Owl’s Optimal Oils

Sponsor: Shell

Project Title: Stribeck Curve FDA Project

• Project Description: From large industrial equipment, to inside the engines of our personal cars, lubricants are crucial to allow for efficient, smooth, and cool operation. Using statistics and data science, the project aimed to quantitively compare lubricants to determine which was best for a given scenario.

• Team Members:
• • Matheus Rempel, Professional Masters Student, Data Science
• • Qiurui Chang, Professional Masters Student, Computational and Applied Mathematics
• • Hao Wang, Professional Masters Student, Computational and Applied Mathematics
• • Mingzhao Liu, Professional Masters Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Ying Wang, Professional Masters Student, Statistics

• Sponsor Mentors:
• • Jennifer Kensler, Consulting Practice Lead in Digital Innovation at Shell
• • Oluwaseyi (Seyi) Ogunsola, Project Leader in the Lubricants Discover Hub at Shell

• Faculty Mentor: Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab, Rice University

Team Name: Pidgeotto

Sponsor: Houston Audubon

Project Title: Deep Learning for Precision Waterbird Monitoring

• Project Description: Colonial waterbirds are important indicators of ecosystem health and provide numerous ecosystem services, hence continuing research and monitoring of these species is critical to inform conservation decisions. In this project we employ deep learning object detection algorithms to automate the laborsome task of censusing colonial waterbird nesting islands from aerial images.

• Team Members:
• • Wenbin Li, PhD Student, Applied Physics
• • Jiahui Yu, Professional Masters Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Dhananjay Singh Vijay Singh, Undergraduate Senior, Computer Science
• • Maojie Tang, Professional Masters Student, Computer Science
• • Raul Garcia, PhD Student, Computational and Applied Mathematics
• • Tianjiao Yu, Professional Masters Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Sponsor Mentors:
• • Anna Vallery, Conservation Specialist, Houston Audubon
• • Richard Gibbons, Gulf Coast Program Manager, American Bird Conservancy
• • Hank Arnold, Volunteer, Houston Audubon

• Faculty Mentor: Arko Barman, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab, Rice University

Team Name: SportsPose

Sponsor: BeONE Sports

Project Title: Computer Vision and on-field artificial intelligence (OFAI), enhancing athletes and coaches to compete at the highest level possible.

• Project Description: SportsPose strives to revolutionize on-field analytics using Computer Vision, Pose Estimation, and Machine Learning. It will provide users with immediate, customized and constructive feedback on their performance.

• Team Members:
• • Bocheng Zhang, Professional Masters Student, Data Science
• • Chris Mullins, Undergraduate Senior, Statistics and Sport Management
• • Heyu Wang, Professional Masters Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • James McNaney, Professional Masters Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Lize Chen, Professional Masters Student, Computer Science
• • Robert Schellenberger, Undergraduate Senior, Computational and Applied Mathematics

• Sponsor Mentors:
• • Scott Deans, CEO, BeONE Sports
• • Luo Wang, COO, BeONE Sports
• • Niti Atre, CTO, BeONE Sports
• • Jason Bell, CGO, BeONE Sports

• Faculty Mentor: Arko Barman, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab, Rice University

Team Name: Superb Owl

Sponsor: Treangen Lab, Rice Computer Science

Project Title: Superb Owls Assemble: Toward the First Complete Reference Genome Assembly of Sammy the Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus)

• Project Description: This project moves toward assembling the first complete genome of the great horned owl, with a dual purpose of advancing biological research and allowing people to more fully appreciate Rice’s animal mascot. To accomplish this, we use cutting-edge genome assembly tools and develop analytical methods to evaluate genome assembly quality.

• Team Members:
• • Liangying Huang, Professional Masters Student, Computer Science
• • Anthony Minsuk Kang, Undergraduate Senior, Computational and Applied Mathematics, Data Science Minor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology Minor
• • Hannah Yin, Ph.D. Student, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

• Sponsor Mentors:
• • Todd Treangen, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Rice University
• • Huw Ogilvie, Assistant Research Professor, Department of Computer Science, Rice University

• Faculty Mentor: Genevera Allen, Associate Professor, Rice University, Founder and Faculty Director, D2K Lab

Team Name: Stroke Risk

Sponsor: UTHealth

Project Title: UTHealth Stroke Prediction

• Project Description: Our project aims to implement a deep learning model to forecast the likelihood of recurrent stroke incidence. We leverage several modalities of medical data and graph machine learning to help our sponsors at UTHealth better allocate care to stroke patients.

• Team Members:
• • Artun Bayer, Undergraduate Senior, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Josue Casco-Rodriguez, Undergraduate Senior, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Justin Cheung, Undergraduate Senior, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Samantha Fuentes, Undergraduate Senior, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Nick Glaze, Undergraduate Senior, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• • Michael Sprintson, Undergraduate Senior, Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Sponsor Mentors:
• • Xiaoqian Jiang, Professor, School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Health Science Center at Houston
• • Sean Savitz, Professor of Neurology, McGovern Medical School, University of Health Science Center at Houston

• Faculty Mentor: Arko Barman, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab, Rice University

Team Name: VisionZero

City of Houston

Project Title: Vision Zero: Crashes are not accidents, they are preventable

• Project Description: Vision Zero is a global strategy to improve street safety for all who use it and change the perception of traffic crashes. By using data analysis to identify features of the most dangerous roads and guide street design, education, and implementation, it is possible to greatly reduce and potentially eliminate traffic deaths, which are not accidents; rather, they are preventable and unacceptable.

• Team Members:
• • Hongjin An, Professional Masters student, Statistics, Data Science
• • Winnie Li, Undergraduate Senior, Computer Science
• • Jamie Chen, Undergraduate Senior, Computational & Applied Math, Cognitive Science, Data Science
• • Ankit Patel, Undergraduate Junior, Statistics, Classical Studies
• • Bryan Sanchez, Undergraduate Senior, Statistics, Sport Management
• • Anthony Nguyen, Undergraduate Senior, Statistics, Art History

• Sponsor Mentors:
• • Lauren Grove, Senior Staff Analyst, City of Houston, Houston Public Works
• • Virginia Lynn, Transportation Planner I, City of Houston, Houston Public Works

• Faculty Mentor: Su Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor, D2K Lab, Rice University

Team 1: J.A.D.D.Y

Faculty Mentor: Su Chen

Project Title: Understanding Food Insecurity in the US

• Project Description: We are looking at county demographics as well as food access in these counties to determine the correlation between factors like education, income, and ethnicity and food insecurity.

• Team Members:
• • Jamie Stewart-Aday (Freshman, Political Science and Social Policy Analysis)
• • Ashwini Bandi (Senior, Biological Sciences)
• • Yuka Aoyama (Sophomore, Computer Science)
• • DeBraylon Carroll (Junior, Sport Management)
• • Dean Connors (Freshman, Psychology)

Team 2: Criminal Minds

Faculty Mentor: Su Chen

Project Title: Houston Crime Report 2019-2021

• Project Description: This project aims to engineer an insightful overview of trends seen throughout a large number of crime reports ranging over three years in the Houston area. The goal is to create an easily interpretable and navigable summary of the crime reports.

• Team Members:
• • Andrea Arellano (Freshman, Mathematics)
• • Kenny Nguyen (Freshman, Sport Management)
• • Matthew Edelstein (Freshman, Sport Management)
• • Tre’shon Devones (Junior, Sport Management)
• • Audrey Connell (Senior, Psychology)

Team 3: Airline Aficionados

Faculty Mentor: Su Chen

Project Title: Delayed and Dismayed: A Closer Look at Why Your Flight Is Not on Time

• Project Description: We obtained the data from the years 2008 and on, and were able to track the patterns associated with flight delays. We took a close look at whether or not the time of year or the day of the week had a relationship with postponed travel.

• Team Members:
• • Alex Guo (Senior, Computer Science)
• • Angelina Hall (Sophomore, Sociology and Health Sciences)
• • Christian Acosta (Sophmore, Sport Management)
• • Seth Davidson (Freshman, Sport Management and Business)
• • Liza DeCaprio (Freshman, Sport Management)

Team 4: d3j

Faculty Mentor: Su Chen

Project Title: Predicting Austin Airbnb Pricing

• Project Description: This project aims to predict the nightly prices of Airbnbs in Austin, TX based on a variety of variables such as rating.

• Team Members:
• • Jess Dooley (Freshman, Finance and Sport Management Leadership)
• • Jaime Samojedny (Junior, Computer Science)
• • David Lemond (Senior, Kinesiology)
• • Jalen Hargrove (Sophomore, Political Science)

Team 5: Rotten Tomatoes

Faculty Mentor: Su Chen

Project Title: Getting inside the mind of a movie critic

• Project Description: Exploring the relationships within genre and various factors like budget, revenue, runtime, as well as between the ratings and those same variables.

• Team Members:
• • Clay Kindiger (Freshman, Computational and Applied Math)
• • Vincent Igusa (Senior, Music)
• • Victoria Johns (Senior, Cognitive Sciences and Managerial Studies)

Team 6: Monalyzers

Faculty Mentor: Su Chen

Project Title: STEM Salary Records From Top Companies

• Project Description: Team Monalyzers is finding relationships and connections between salaries and other variables like years of experience, company name, and title of employees at top STEM companies. Team Monalyzers aims to draw valuable insights regarding the workforce and compensation trends to promote salary transparency and help reduce pay inequity.

• Team Members:
• • Juan Serrano (Senior, Mechanical Engineering)
• • Josh Gill (Freshman, Linguistics, Psychology, & Sport Management)
• • Satasha Kostelecky (Junior, Sports Medicine & Exercise Physiology)
• • Liza Jacob (Freshman, Political Science & Business)
• • Nathanael Wang (Freshman, Mathematical Economic Analysis & Sport Management)

Team 7: America’s Top Colleges 2019

Faculty Mentor: Su Chen

Project Title: Average Alumni Salary in America’s Top Universities

• Project Description: Using the Forbes America’s Top Colleges 2019 dataset, we explore the correlation between average alumni salary and characteristics of the school, including its acceptance rate, rank, and status as a public versus private university. In doing so, we hope to uncover whether top colleges set their students up for success by leading to higher salaries, or whether the financial lure of higher education is simply a myth.

• Team Members:
• • Mehek Jain (Sophomore, Political Science and History)
• • Michelle Pham (Freshman, Computer Science)
• • Izeya Floyd (Junior, Sport Management)
• • Jack Turner (Freshman, Sport Management)
• • Lindsay Simms (Sophomore, Sport Management)

Team 8:___yElloW JaCkEt__

Faculty Mentor: Su chen

Project Title: NBA HOF Prediction

• Project Description: The goal of this project is to project NBA players who are not currently inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame to see who is most likely to be inducted in the future. We will use a combination of each player's base stats, advanced stats, and the honors they have received and perform several supervised machine learning models to reach a conclusion.

• Team Members:
• • James He (Sophomore, Sport Management)
• • Wafa Mohamed (Sophomore, Mathematical Economics)
• • Elizabeth LaBue (Senior, Sport Management and Spanish)
• • Everett Adkins (Freshman, Statistics)
• • Connor Taylor (Freshman, Sport Management and Economics)

Team 9: The Best QuaranTeam

Faculty Mentor: Su Chen

Project Title: Evaluating the Role of Race And Age Demographics on COVID-19 Cases in Harris County

• Project Description: Harris County has the 5th highest number of confirmed cases of counties in the USA as reported by the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center and is expected to continue to be a major hotspot for COVID-19 cases in the United States. In order to better inform public health experts and epidemiologists, we are interested in analyzing the relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and case count changes per week, broken down by racial and age demographics in Harris County.

• Team Members:
• • Ken Nguyen (Senior, Neuroscience)
• • Mason LaFerney (Sophomore, Computer Science)
• • Kirk Lockhart (Junior, Sport Management)

Team 10: Spotify

Faculty Mentor: Su Chen

Project Title: Spotify Data and Predictions

• Project Description: Our project strives to predict certain trends in Spotify data through numerical and categorical variables such as genre, artist, danceability, energy, etc.

• Team Members:
• • Heidi Li (Junior, Architecture)
• • Saatchi Sagoo-Jones (Freshman, Statistics)
• • Tyler Field, (Freshman, Computer Science)

Team 11: The Covid-19 Death Investigators

Faculty Mentor: Su Chen

Project Title: “Predicting COVID-19 Deaths Through Global Development Statistics”

• Project Description: In our project, we are using two main datasets, one focused on the number of deaths by various causes in each country, and one focused on global development statistics for each country. Through merging these datasets, we seek to predict how many COVID-19 related deaths a country had in 2021 based on various global development statistics, which in turn could be useful in predicting how badly a country is at-risk should another pandemic ensue.

• Team Members:
• • Elena Schwegman (Freshman, Sport Management)
• • Thomas Ma (Freshman, Sport Management)
• • David Davisson (Junior, Political Science)
• • Audrey Lu (Junior, Cognitive Science)
• • Jalen Reeves (Sophomore, History)

Team 12: Car Buyer Breakthroughs

Faculty Mentor: Su Chen

Project Title: Analysis of Car Buyers in India by Gender

• Project Description: Our project utilizes a dataset of car buyers from Kaggle in an effort to determine the factors that influence who purchase certain models of cars based on gender.

• Team Members:
• • Zephyr Zoidis (Freshman, Business and Sport Management)
• • Derek Fu (Sophomore, Sport Management and Statistics)
• • Saoirse Disney-McKeethen (Junior, Cell Biology and Genetics)
• • Kenny Seymour (Freshman, Business)

Team 13: The Determiners

Faculty Mentor: Su Chen

Project Title: How much are YOU making?

• Project Description: Using data from the 2018 General Social Survey (GSS), our team will attempt to determine the main factors that affect a person’s income.

• Team Members:
• • Amber Jackson (Senior, Sociology/PLST)
• • Chloe Singer (Freshman, Sport Management and Social Policy Analysis)
• • Colin Freeman (Sophomore, Sport Management and Business)
• • Orestis Tsatalmpasidis (Junior, Computational and Applied Mathematics)

Team 14: [BMJC^2 (BMJC squared)

Faculty Mentor: Su Chen

Project Title: From NCAA to NBA

• Project Description: Does the success of players in the NCAA reflect the possible success of their careers in the NBA? Our project aims to examine the correlation of a players’ performance in the NCAA and in the NBA to predict who has the potential to be the next NBA superstar.

• Team Members:
• • Casen Matthews (Senior, Political Science)
• • Charles Hargon (Sophomore, Business and Sport Management)
• • Jonah Lubin (Freshman, Sport Analytics and Sport Management Law)
• • Bennett Mecom (Junior, Sports management)
• • Miyu Thepsenavong (Freshman, Undecided)