Research Experiences for Undergraduates
MDI and the Computer Science Department are co-hosting a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site. This REU site aims not only to teach students about computer science research but also to help them understand how researchers in other disciplines use computer science algorithms and analytic tools to generate evidence for developing public policy.
Summer 2025 REU Cohort
This cohort of 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.
REU Students
Swarthmore College ’26
Georgetown School of Arts & Sciences, Computer Science and Government, Minor in Philosophy ’26
Rutgers University New Brunswick ’27
University of Washington ’26
University of Florida ’27
The University of Tennessee Knoxville ’27
University of Delaware ’27
Transylvania University ’26
Case Western Reserve University ’27
Duke University ’26
Barnard College ’27
Columbia University in the City of New York ’27
REU Faculty Mentors
Professor
Assistant Professor
Dean, McCourt School of Public Policy (SLE)
Professor | Chair, Department of Computer Science
