Applied Data Science Research for Social Good (CS 8903 & CS 6999)

Transforming Master’s Research in Data Science

Learning Outcomes:

  • Transformative Mentor-based Learning: Students will learn to publish data science research through mentorship from subject matter experts who model effective use of digital publishing technologies while receiving feedback on how to communicate complex analytical work to both technical and non-technical audiences. Through this transformative expert-guided approach, students will develop proficiency necessary to publish reproducible interdisciplinary research workflows that enhance transparency, collaboration, and knowledge sharing within the data science community.
  • Teaching Open-Access for Technology: Students will partner with faculty and graduate students to contribute to the broader data science knowledge commons by creating, curating, and sharing open educational resources such as documented code repositories, tutorial materials, or dataset annotations that can be freely accessed and adapted by future learners.

Master’s-Centered Research

HAAG is unique in centering masters students as the primary researchers in interdisciplinary projects. Students from the OMSCS program get the opportunity to be mentored by both their faculty affiliate in an applied field and their computational advisor, a doctoral or post-doctoral researcher trained in computer science or applied mathematics field of study.

FAIR-CS

This course utilizes the Framework for Accelerating Interdisciplinary Research in Computer Science (FAIR-CS) first proposed at PEARC 2025. The FAIR-CS framework (pictured on the left) segments the roles of Faculty, PhD students, and master’s researcher in pursuit of a shared tool development and publication goal.

About This Page

This page outlines the requirements to remain in good standing as a student researcher within the Human Augmented Analytics Group additional procedures are provided on the course wiki.

Core Instructional Team

These are the core instructors who will assist you during your time with HAAG.

Science panel photo

Bree Shi

Director of HAAG

Breanna “Bree” Shi founded HAAG in the Summer of 2024 and currently serves as its director. Bree is passionate about giving all students, both online and on campus, opportunities to be a part of vital and exciting research, and leads HAAG with these convictions in mind. Under Bree’s leadership, HAAG has grown rapidly from its inception to its current size of 120 researchers. She currently balances her administrative role with outreach and communications to continue growing HAAG and its influence in the wider research community both within and beyond Georgia Tech.

    Nick Lytle, Ph.D

    Director of OMSCS Research

    As the director of Research for OMSCS, Dr. Nick Lytle serves as HAAG’s liaison to making research opportunities available to Online Masters students. Dr. Lytle organized research opportunities for over 16,000 OMSCS students, some of whom are currently student researchers with HAAG. As the creator and instructor of the open research course 8803, he is intimately familiar with the research process for Online students.

      Charlie Clark

      Head Instructional Associate

      Charles (Charlie) Clark is a seasoned researcher and the Director of Open-Source Initiatives and head teaching assistant for HAAG. A recent M.S. in Computer Science graduate from Georgia Tech with a specialization in Machine Learning, Charlie has an extensive research background, including three semesters with HAAG’s Cichlid CV and Bio-Boost teams. He is passionate about developing computational approaches to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a focus he will carry into his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Florida. Under his leadership in open-source initiatives, Charlie continues to foster HAAG’s contribution to the broader research community.

        Jeanette Schofield

        Director of Ethical Practice

        Contact Jeanette for:
        Conflict resolution, project change request, Canvas training.

          Tom Deatherage

          Director of Engagement

          Contact Tom for:
          communal time allocation and scholarly activities

            Thomas Orth

            Director of Retention

            Contact Thomas for:
            BaseCamp training, Requesting project support (all members), and website support

              Mentorship-Based Learning

              Communal Time Allocation

              Faculty Affiliates

              Computational Advisors

              Course Logistics

              Research is not easy so this will not be a easy course. However, we believe we can provide every student researcher with a unique pathway to success and this course rewards those who choose to accept the challenge necessary to advance the current state of scientific knowledge.

              Course Grading

              In HAAG, grading is used as a tool to encourage student researchers to exhibit the behaviors typical of a researcher: developing community, independently learning, and sharing knowledge with their broader community. For many students, HAAG may serve as their first research experience, so by prioritizing scholarly behavior over technical assessment we are able to provide a realistic simulation of a research career to online learners. Continuing in this mission, final grades are weighted to reward students who show periods of grade improvement and high grade maintenance in an approach called progressive grading. Progressive Grading is defined by 3 augmentations to traditional grade averaging:

              •  Smoothing during periods of grade increase
              • Maximizing grades during periods of high grade maintenance
              • Grade rounding
              Grade Comparison Chart
              Traditional Grade
              Progressive Grade
              80%
              Original Average
              90%
              Progressive Average

              Progress towards Publication

              50%

              We define success in an interdisciplinary research experience by your ability to contribute to the expansion of scientific knowledge. One method of quantifying this expansion is to track the students’ progress toward a publication.

              Here we provide a non-exhaustive list of activities that contribute to a satisfactory score:

              • Submitting weekly reports that prove progress
              • Completes the majority of objectives in the timeline set by project advisors.
              • Provides deliverables (presentations, demo, documentation) as requested by project advisors.
              • Responds to critics and evaluations provided by project advisor.

              Engagement in Collaboration

              50%

              We define research success in a research experience by your ability to maintain a healthy community of practice. We practice community-based learning which means all researchers are evaluated on their skill as collaborators.

              Here we provide a non-exhaustive list of activities that contribute to a satisfactory score:

              • Regularly attends meetings with team and collaborator
              • Responsive to team members within 24-48 hours
              • Trains other researchers as requested by project advisors
              • Completes weekly communal time allocation*

              Scholarly Activity

              +20%

              Frequently, we see researchers demonstrate a commitment to their research that supersedes our expectations. We coin these actions scholarly activities which can award a student up to 20% towards their final grade. Periodically, HAAG administrators will post opportunities for scholarly activity credit, but students may also submit requests to admin for scholar activity credit which will be assessed for credit. The general rule is that HAAG can use these activities for promotional materials. Some examples include:

              • Creating an Open Education Resource (OER)
              • Presenting your research to a non-HAAG audience.
              • Earning a research-based award
              • Applying for PhD Programs
              • Volunteering in science education

              Course Deliverables

              Weekly Reports:

              Project Meetings:

              Unit Meetings:

              Attendance Reporting

              Generally, students will have one weekly time commitment with their project team or with a larger group of researchers studying similar projects (units). Outside of these times, researchers independently allocate and track their research hours with the expectation that students will respond to inquiries for project members, advisors, and administrator within 24-48 hours of being contacted. Here are some guidelines for attendance:

              • Members are responsible to inform project members if they will be unavailable for a significant period of time (greater than 2 weekdays). Note, disclosing the reason for absence is always at the discretion of the researcher. Researchers are only required to report the dates and times of the absence.
              • Members are generally expected to attend 90% of all meetings. Attendance will be tracked by meeting managers and monitored by HAAG administrators. Significant missed meetings will result in a lower “Engagement in Collaboration” score.

              Course Technology

              BaseCamp:

              Other communication Platforms:

              Advisors Communication Preference:

              Ethics, Retention, and Support

              Plagiarism & AI Assistance Policy: Plagiarism is not tolerated in the research group. AI tools can be used to assist in code generation and paragraph phrasing with considerations for research impacts. All publications and progress reports to collaborators should be intellectually honest and may be subject to review for plagiarism & AI detection.

              Respect & Professionalism Policy: Disrespect towards members of HAAG programs will not be tolerated. Members are expected to handle conflict with mutual-consideration and professionalism in all interpersonal interactions within the team. Instances of disrespect or unprofessionalism should be raised immediately to the instructional team.

              Project Change Policy: Students may request a project change if their technical expertise is not a match for their project group. HAAG instructional team has the final say on project placement. Project preference cannot be guaranteed.

              Additional Student Resources:

              Questions?

              Please Contact Jeanette Schofield, HAAG Director of Ethics & Compliance with questions relate to HAAG Policies.

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