“Computing for the common good” is more than an abstract concept in the UMass Amherst’s Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) – it’s a guidepost. And this summer, UMass Amherst CICS students at the undergraduate and graduate levels brought the philosophy to life as part of the Data Science for the Common Good (DS4CG) program. 

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In DS4CG’s 11-week program, the students collaborated with partner organizations as well as domain experts, professional data scientists and researchers from UMass Amherst to co-design and implement solutions to the organizations’ real-world problems. Project partners for summer 2026 included HILL for Literacy, the Maryland Department of Budget and Management, the Boston Cyclists Union, BirdFluMap and BirdFlow, and Hampden County.
 

HILL for Literacy

HILL For Literacy works with schools and school districts to improve literacy education through courses, coaching and facilitation. This team, led by research fellow Virginia Partridge, consisted of CICS graduate students Martin Riddell and Rudra Darpan Patel.

They produced an exploratory data analysis of HILL’s available student and program implementation and worked on an instructional focus recommendation system prototype. The prototype looks at students’ past assessment results to suggest specific areas of instructional focus to benefit students in the classroom. 

The most exciting aspect of the program has been “seeing how what I’ve been learning about can be applied to actually help people,” Riddell said, adding that HILL plans to incorporate the team’s solution into an upcoming pilot program.

“Being able to work on a real-life project and getting hands-on experience with real datasets was really helpful for me,” Patel said. “Also, working in teams helped me to learn valuable skills from my peers.”
 

Boston Cyclists Union

The Boston Cyclists Union team was led by Ethan Plunkett, a CICS research fellow, and consisted of graduate students Thanya Yavaraj Sah and Kinjal Pandey, and undergraduate students Colin DeLuca and Marianne Lane.

The team combined road network data with information from the census and destinations to identify where road improvements were needed: where bike infrastructure already exists, as well as how traffic stress influences how people get where they want to go and where demographics indicate gaps in access. 

“Upgrading just a few blocks of bottlenecks can bridge isolated neighborhoods and unlock miles of continuous, safe cycling across the city,” Sah said.

Using data to propose solutions for real-life infrastructure “made the project feel very tangible,” Pandey said. “We were building something that could help inform decisions about where safer cycling infrastructure is most needed.”

“The most important takeaway was learning how crucial it is to look at a problem through the eyes of the people you’re actually solving it for,” Sah said. “In this case, that meant looking at the data from a cyclist’s perspective. It really taught me to always center the end-user when solving a problem.”

Avian flu project

Another team developed an app that combines BirdFluMap’s radar data with information from BirdFlow to generate species-specific bird traffic estimates for avian influenza risk assessment. This team, led by Plunkett, was composed of graduate students Ryan Hilton and Rukmini Nazre.

“The goal of our project was to enable the integration of species-specific information into real-time bird traffic data,” Nazre explained. “Using acoustic logger data, we validated a methodology to assign species to radar traffic, and it outperformed existing methods by a significant amount.”

Nazre is enthusiastic about contributing to conservation efforts and helping to prevent avian flu. “The scale of the project is also exciting,” she said. “We are utilizing a large amount of historical data, combining millions of citizen science observations with radar data collected from all across North America.”
 

AI for Hampden County

The Hampden County team, led by Tom Bernardin, executive director of the Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (CDSAI) at UMass Amherst, comprised graduate students Subhangi Choudhary and Khalit Gulamov. 

AI for Hampden County is part of the campusLaunch AI enablement program, which helps organizations in the region foster a culture of innovation in AI through scalable tools, structured programming and dedicated support. 

The team developed two AI agents to facilitate more efficient creation of promotional materials by the YMCA. “Staff provide the program information, and the agents create branded materials using YMCA-approved templates and guidelines,” Choudhary said. “Both agents also automatically retrieve suitable approved images from the YMCA’s Google Drive. Staff can then review, edit and approve the final designs. Our tools reduce repetitive work and allow YMCA staff to spend more time supporting their programs and the people they serve.”

“In the end, YMCA representatives seemed to be very happy not just about the time savings but also the quality of the produced content, especially since nonprofits often lack dedicated design or marketing personnel,” Gulamov said.
 

Maryland Department of Budget and Management

The state of Maryland is modernizing its workforce infrastructure, so the DS4CG team built a market analysis tool and a search system for the Maryland Department of Budget and Management, which supports state agencies to provide efficient, fiscally sound government to Maryland residents. 

The tool is designed to gather and analyze external job market data to align state job titles, salaries and qualifications within the context of the larger labor market. This team, also led by Partridge, comprised CICS graduate student Samruddhi Devendra Bhabad and undergraduate student Ngan Nguyen.

The team’s biweekly sprint demo sessions with the Maryland Department of Budget and Management were especially useful, Nguyen said. “These continuous discussions with them have contributed tremendously to the success of our project, as we iterated on it based on their feedback and suggestions.”

The DS4CG program has helped Nguyen connect with fellow students, mentors and professional contacts, she added. “I have learned how to talk with stakeholders, how to work in a team, how to do code reviews in a responsible manner, and how to develop a project from 0 to 1,” she said.
 

Computing for the common good

Each group worked on its own project, but broader events such as a recent panel on public interest technology allowed the student participants to come together, learn from each other and network with the partner organizations and panelists. 

“Everyone can benefit from having role models to look up to in their field and a community of practice to share ideas with,” Partridge said. “Building those connections and sharing our experiences with each other creates opportunities for collaboration and inspiration to learn and try new things.”