The 2022-2023 Data Science Capstone held a poster showcase on Monday, June 5 at UCSB's Loma Pelona Center. Marking the collaboration made possible by grants from the National Science Foundation's HDR Data Science Corps, undergraduate fellows from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo also presented their work, bringing the total number of research projects on display to well over 20.

Congratulations to Ankur Malik and Kabir Snell and their project, "Optical character recognition and text extraction techniques for portable oxygen concentrator prescription forms," for winning the Best Poster Award, as voted by participants. The project was sponsored by Inogen.

In conjunction with the research presentations, faculty from the PSTAT Department also arranged panels on graduate programs and careers in data science. Current PhD and Master's students opened up about their experiences and how to succeed in graduate school while Professor Mike Ludkovski delivered some tips on how to strengthen an application and how to choose between PhD and Master's tracks. Professor Sang-Yun Oh concluded the event with an invited panel of data scientists and engineers, who gave valuable insight on current trends in industry and what students can expect after graduation. 

2023 marked the third consecutive year of UCSB's Undergraduate Capstone in Data Science. This year's class featured 60 students (pictured below, courtesy of Alex Dekhytar) and 14 sponsored projects -- six projects with industry sponsors, and eight projects collaborating with research labs. Although students primarily hailed from the Statistics and Applied Probability, there were many other majors represented, including Economics, Biology, Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Computing. The three-quarter course was led by Professor Trevor Ruiz. All UCSB posters and presentations will be made available on the Data Science Capstone Website. 

In 2023-2024, the Data Science Capstone will be taught by PSTAT Professor Laura Baracaldo, with additional support from the Computer Science Department. Student applications for admittance to the Capstone (PSTAT 197A and CMPSC 190DD) are currently being considered. We are looking forward to the program's continued success, and future collaborations with local industry partners and research labs. 

The Data Science Research Showcase is sponsored by the UCSB Data Science Initiative, with support also from NSF grant  #1924205.