Designee
Justin Pearlman
Position
Vice Provost for Communications and Engagement
Website
Region
Northeast
The Public Interest Technology initiative engages faculty and programs
across Columbia University. The School of International and Public Affairs
(SIPA) is the interdisciplinary hub of policy-oriented training, research and
engagement at Columbia and has been particularly focused on the growing
intersection of technology and policy. The school’s Tech & Policy Initiative
has inaugurated new research in internet governance, cyber security and the
digital economy, and is building out curriculum and engagement in these
core areas.
PIT-related work will continue to grow and flourish in many of Columbia’s
interdisciplinary centers and institutes. Our University-wide Data Science
Institute has as one of its core missions the use of data to address societal
challenges. Its eight core research centers, focused on pressing issues such
as smart cities, data and health, and media and society, reflect the
institute’s motto: “Data For Good.” This year it inaugurated the DSI Race and
Data Science Lecture Series, advancing research at the intersection of race,
equity, and computational science.
Columbia’s Collaboratory funds the development of innovative courses
taught jointly by computational experts and scholars in disciplines tackling
issues facing society in order to provide students with the data skills they will
need. More than 30 new courses have already been supported by the
Collaboratory, and include SIPA’s Computational Literacy for Public Policy, as
well as courses such as Data Science for Social Good and Data Literacy in
Urban Planning and Journalism.
In the year ahead, Columbia aims to expand its focus on Public Interest
Technology on a range of fronts. It will create new student practical
experiences such as the recent Call for Code hackathon which challenged students to developed solutions for disaster preparedness and relief
programs. It will expand collaborations between between SIPA, Columbia’s other public interest-focused schools, and Engineering and Data Sciences. It will further develop interdisciplinary research and teaching efforts, and
partnerships with civic organizations, and foster new pathways programs to diversify both the academy and public interest tech fields.
Justin Pearlman, Vice Provost for Communications and Engagement
Educational Offerings
Columbia-Lehman Public Interest Technology Data Science Corps (PIT-DSC)
This project, a collaboration between Columbia University and Lehman College, will expand and scale a Public Interest Technology Data Science Corps (PIT-DSC) summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program that offers experiential learning through a series of PIT projects working with NYC’s underserved communities.
Principal Investigator
Tian Zheng, Professor and Chair, Department of Statistics, and Jennifer Laird, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology
Educational Offerings; Faculty and Institution Building
Columbia-Lehman Public Interest Technology Data Science Corps (PIT-DSC)
A collaboration between Columbia University and Lehman College proposes to initiate and pilot a Public Interest Technology Data Science Corps (PIT-DSC) summer URE program that offers experiential learning based on projects of public interest in NYC’s underserved communities, in partnership with Town+Gown:NYC (a city-wide university-community partnership program). It allows NYC’s own data science talent to contribute to these important projects, while simultaneously diversifying the data science pipeline. The proposed summer URE program will be thoroughly evaluated in terms of learning outcomes, ethics, and pipeline diversity and inclusion. We also propose to identify stakeholders’ interests and curricular elements for PIT education.
Faculty and Institution Building
Justice Equity + Tech Initiatives @ Columbia Social Work
The Justice Equity + Tech (JE+T) lab sits at the intersection of social work and emerging technologies to map and address complex social ecologies and to inform the development of digital tools designed to not only avoid harm but to promote social equality. The proposed projects are grounded in an anti-racist and anti-oppressive practice, focusing on supporting, a) meaningful engagement of expertise from non-technologists and non-academics in contributing to the development of public interest tech and technologies and, b) transdisciplinary classroom, experiential and clinic based learning and collaboration.
Educational Offerings
Rethinking Human Computer Interaction: New Design Principles for Public Interest Technology
We both define and promote Public Interest Technology through new, interdisciplinary design processes and principles for Human Computer Interaction — mixing Architecture, Computer Science, Journalism — that respond to the potentials as well as the adverse effects of computation on society today.
Principal Investigator
Lydia Chilton, Assistant Professor, Computer Science