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Clarissa A

- Research Program Mentor

MIDS at Duke University

Expertise

Data Science, Social Sciences, public policy, policing and criminal law,

Bio

Clarissa is passionate about leveraging data science to drive impactful social sciences research. With a Master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Data Science from Duke University, she has developed expertise in causal inference, statistical modeling, experiment design, machine learning, optimization, etc. Clarissa has applied these skills in various projects, including analyzing opioid control regulations and improving the accuracy of Spotify song genre predictions. Most of her work is grounded in a commitment to using data science to inform and enhance public policy decisions. Outside of her professional endeavors, Clarissa finds joy in long-distance running, and she loves exploring diverse genres and topics through reading. Her hobbies not only keep her physically active but also continually expand her knowledge and perspective, contributing to her holistic approach to problem-solving and innovation.

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Public Institution Accountability

There's a wealth of public data available on the internet about public institutions, but most of it is hidden in disaggregation. With data science skills like web scraping and statistical analysis, we can gather and analyze this data to uncover biases and mismanagement in small jurisdictions that do not have tools for this purpose in place. By doing this, we can make the actions of elected officials more transparent and help the public hold them accountable. This kind of research not only empowers us as citizens but also contributes to a more just and transparent society. The results can be shared with the institution and the people they serve through a website or a small application.

Coding skills

python

Languages I know

Spanish

Teaching experience

In grad school, I had the opportunity to mentor two second-year students on a research project. We collected public data, transformed it into useful table formats, and analyzed it to publish our conclusions. It was a very rewarding experience, and I would love to share my skills to help others answer questions. I also worked as a teaching assistant for a Causal Inference class where we covered different types of experiment settings, from observational, as you find in social science journals, to design and conduct experiments.

Credentials

Work experience

Nike (2024 - Current)
Data Scientist
Accenture (2018 - 2021)
Strategy Consultant
Duke University (2022 - 2022)
Teaching Assistant and Researcher

Education

University of Minnesota
BSE Bachelor of Science in Engineering
Industrial Engineering
Duke University
MIDS Master of Information and Data Science
Data Science, Public Policy

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