Undergraduate students are invited to apply for an 8-week summer research program connecting formal computer science education to real world data science research to public policy decision making. This REU Site aims not only to teach students about computer science research, but to also help them understand how researchers in other disciplines use computer science algorithms and analytic tools to generate evidence for developing public policy. Students will work closely with a faculty mentor, as well as post-doctoral and graduate-student researchers, on a project specifically designed for undergraduates. REU participants will present their research at a poster session at the end of the summer and will have the opportunity to continue their research into the fall. This program is funded by the National Science Foundation and Georgetown University.
2025 Theme: FIREARMS RESEARCH
One of the key factors limiting gun policy research is a lack of good data on the number and range of gun-related outcomes and how social media conversation about guns impacts public opinion. While it is still unclear whether or not social media is a reasonable source for gun-related measurement questions, one area where social media and newspaper data can be particularly informative is in understanding the relationship between different events and policies and online public opinion.
This cohort of REU students will focus on modeling opinion as it relates to different firearm-related policies and events of the day. It is possible to work on stance detection using social media posts (Kawintiranon & Singh, 2021), and with the recent advancements in generative AI, this type of detection may be less costly with respect to manual data labeling. Therefore, this cohort will use a combination of generated training data, relevant public document data, and auxiliary data to improve opinion detection without labeling more data. Example auxiliary sources include public reviews, images, and network knowledge. Students will also learn about fairness issues and consider which subpopulatons are posting about which policy issues.
Dates
Tentative dates for the 8-week program are June 7th to August 2nd, 2025. Students will receive a break for the July 4th holiday. Participants must be available for the entire duration of the program.
Stipends and Housing
Each participant will receive a stipend of $5,600, housing in an on-campus residence hall, and up to $500 in reimbursements for travel expenses.
Eligibility
Current sophomores and juniors who are majoring in computer science are encouraged to apply. Coursework and/or previous research experience data science, statistics, public policy and/or computational linguistics is a plus, but not required. Students should have a demonstrated interest in large-scale data analysis and its implications in society. Students identifying as female, students from traditionally underserved minorities, first-generation college students, and students from institutions with limited research opportunities are all strongly encouraged to apply. Per NSF requirements, participants must be US citizens or permanent residents.
Application
A complete application includes
- Online application form on NSF ETAP.
- Unofficial undergraduate transcript, including Fall 2024 grades, to be uploaded in application form.
The application for this program is due on Sunday, February 2nd before 11:59PM Eastern Standard Time. Review of applications will continue until all positions have been filled.
Contact Info
Please send inquiries to MassiveDataREU@Georgetown.edu
