Data Science

Community Service

January 11, 2023 by University Communications & Marketing

Making a difference through data science and service

Community service has always been a big part of Katherine Gonzalez’s life.

And her passion for making a difference followed her to Chaminade. It’s why she jumped at the opportunity to start a Latinx Club at the university to celebrate her culture with others, and why she was central to an effort to make care packages for the homeless during the pandemic. And it’s what ultimately landed her in data science, where she found an innovative way to serve others.

“Service is what being a good citizen means,” she said, in a recent interview.

Gonzalez, who is slated to graduate in 2023, is originally from Los Angeles.

She’s majoring in Criminology and Criminal Justice with a minor in Data Science but found Chaminade through her interest in Forensic Science. Gonzalez quips that she switched after a grueling semester of Chemistry, but she also found Criminology and Criminal Justice more in line with her interests in public policy and social justice.

During her freshman year at the university, Gonzalez kept her schedule busy. In addition to launching the Latinx Club, she was in student government and joined the Residence Hall Association. She said club activities helped her from getting homesick and gave her the chance to strike up new friendships.

It was in the summer before her sophomore year that she first learned the power of data science.

One of her mentors, Data Science Program Director Dr. Rylan Chong, encouraged her to participate in Chaminade’s exciting hands-on collaboration with the Texas Advanced Computing Center. The program is called Supporting Pacific Indigenous Computing Excellence (SPICE) and challenges participants to use data science methodology to interpret, communicate and visualize big data sets in new ways.

Students like Gonzalez walk away with a new appreciation of just how instrumental data can be in educating and informing communities—and helping to drive positive change. For SPICE, Gonzalez dove into data around missing children in Hawaii. She also tackled a project through the Chaminade Summer Research Institute that looked at health and wellness trends among foster children in the islands.

Almost immediately, she was hooked.

“People think coding is so hard, but it’s like everything. Once you learn it, it becomes more manageable,” she said, adding that she was honored in her sophomore year to continue her studies by participating in the Advanced Computing for Social Change Institute through Chaminade.

Like her other data science work, the program had a strong community service focus. And she said it prepared her for a new challenge in her junior year: to serve as a peer mentor for that initiative along with the Pacific Region Data Science Challenge, a competition with students from around the country.

Gonzalez said helping other students built her confidence—and her passion for data science studies. “It’s just the best feeling to teach other people and help other people do things they never thought they could accomplish,” she said. “I realized that mentoring also helps you build your own skills.”

As a senior, Gonzalez is as busy as ever while looking forward to her next steps after graduation. In addition to participating in Campus Ministry, her Latinx Club and Chaminade’s Civic Engagement Club, Rodriguez is a peer mentor for a freshman orientation class and an assistant in the residence hall.

She also has an active internship with Dr. Janet Davidson, vice provost for Academic Affairs and Criminology and Criminal Justice professor, to provide data analysis on human trafficking. She said the work has given her a better understanding of what she wants to do after college.

First off, she said, she wants to attend graduate school to hone her coding skills.

And then she hopes to bring those skills to bear and drive positive change.

“I want to be able to help people,” Gonzalez said. “And this is a way that I can help in a big way.”

Data Mining

December 21, 2022 by University Communications & Marketing

Alumna sifts through databases to produce Hawaii’s Uniform Crime Reporting

For most of us, a dashboard primarily indicates a vehicle’s rate of speed, RPMs, engine temperature, gas gauge, mileage and maybe even a personal playlist. However, for Zoey Kaneakua ’22, an instrument panel means something completely different. A 2022 Chaminade University alumna with a degree in Data Science, Analytics and Visualization (DSAV), the 22-year-old Kauai native implements dashboards to measure crime statistics in Hawaii.

“In my sophomore year, I considered leaving Chaminade because I wasn’t enjoying my choice of major,” recalls Kaneakua, a recipient of the Ho‘oulu Scholarship, which is awarded to Native Hawaiian students pursuing a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). “Then my mom suggested that I major in data science, which I wasn’t sure about, but I’m glad I listened to her. She was right.”

In middle school, Kaneakua developed an interest in computer coding just so she could personalize her Tumblr profile. Data science, though, was not in her purview nor in her future. But forensics was, or so she thought. Now she’s a self-described “research geek,” who prefers math over the arts, and enjoys designing dashboards with custom colors and functions.

“I really grew an interest in juvenile justice and criminal justice data when I was at Chaminade,” Kaneakua asserts. “I wanted to use data science—using statistics and computer science—to make it more understandable, interactive and accessible to the public.”

Kaneakua was the ideal candidate for the Data Science program, which encourages students to work in grassroots and community organizations, a fundamental principle in the pedagogical approach at Chaminade, which the National Science Foundation (NSF) INCLUDES Alliance selected to lead a groundbreaking $10 million grant project aimed at creating new opportunities in STEM and data science careers for historically underrepresented populations across Hawai‘i and the Pacific Region.

“You can apply data science to every field—education, healthcare and mental health, environmental science and climate change, and criminal justice,” explains Dr. Rylan Chong, director of Chaminade’s Data Science program. “It’s not just about crunching numbers, but ensuring the numbers reflect different viewpoints and getting those numbers into the right hands.”

Sitting in front of two screens at her office in the Department of the Attorney General’s Crime Prevention and Justice Assistance Division, Kaneakua demonstrates how she monitors and reports crime statistics in Hawaii and then uploads the data to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), an incident-based reporting system in which law enforcement collects data on each crime occurrence.

“When I was in school, all my research was in criminal justice,” Kaneakua says. “And I was especially interested in looking at juvenile justice.”

Ironically, the crime reports that Kaneakua once poured over are now her kuleana (responsibility). She also now understands how there could be discrepancies in the numbers. Hired in September as a data analyst with the Crime Prevention and Justice Assistance Division, the former Silversword is now the point person, to whom police departments on Oahu, Maui, Hawaii Island and Kauai submit their monthly crime reports. Citing her education at Chaminade—and specifically her mentor Dr. Chong—as reasons for being in her current position, Kaneakua points out that she wasn’t even aware that this position was open.

“This was one of the hardest jobs to pursue because the state requires any new hires to have at least one-year experience,” Chong says. “In Zoey’s case, she needed at least one year of experience in both data science and criminal justice since she was filling the role of a database specialist and a data analyst.”

In her junior year, Kaneakua joined aspiring data scientists from across Hawaii and the mainland to participate in Chaminade’s monthlong Supporting Pacific Indigenous Computing Excellence (SPICE) Data Science Summer Institute.

“That was my first independent research involving juvenile justice,” Kaneakua says. “And I think I built my first dashboard in three days using Python (a high-level, general-purpose programming language).”

For her next project, Kaneakua participated in C4C (Computing for Change), looking at domestic violence across the U.S., and trying to make sense of the data and its limitations. Today, she works on real-time projects, which allow her to use all the skills and knowledge that she learned and honed while attending Chaminade.

“None of this would have been possible without Rylan,” says Kaneakua in praise of Chong. “He believed in me and helped me navigate and find my niche. I am eternally grateful for this opportunity and I am proud to represent Chaminade’s DSAV program as I continue to conduct criminal justice research in Hawaii.”

Harnessing the Data Revolution Through a $10 Million Grant

September 2, 2022 by University Communications & Marketing

Dr. Rylan Chong, director of Chaminade’s Data Science program, calls it nothing less than historic.

In early August, the National Science Foundation (NSF) INCLUDES Alliance selected Chaminade University to lead a groundbreaking $10 million grant project aimed at creating new opportunities in STEM and data science careers for historically underrepresented populations across Hawai‘i and the Pacific Region.

The grant announcement, Chong said, is one of those moments that educators will look back on in a decade or so and recognize as a turning point—the beginning of new initiatives that opened doors for students, the institutions that serve them, and nonprofit and business communities in the region.

“This is about leveling up, addressing capacity in the workforce and making sure our low-income and underrepresented students have an opportunity to bring their perspectives to data science,” Chong said, adding that welcoming diverse populations into data science will ensure their voices are heard.

“You can apply data science to every field—education, healthcare and mental health, environment science and climate change, and criminal justice,” he said. “It’s not just about crunching numbers but ensuring the numbers reflect different viewpoints and getting those numbers into the right hands.”

That’s why the Data Science program at Chaminade doesn’t just want to prepare students for competitive careers at the Googles and Amazons of the world. “We also want to find opportunities for students working in grassroots and community organizations, being able to contribute to projects they’re interested in while making a difference to the places where they live,” Chong said.

The competitive NSF grant is one of the largest Chaminade has ever received and reflects the strong data science work and foundational programs already in place at the University.

With the transformative funding, Chaminade’s United Nations-affiliated CIFAL Honolulu Center will spearhead the launch of the university’s new Alliance Supporting Pacific Impact through Computational Excellence (ALL-SPICE) with a consortium of partners, putting a strong emphasis on leadership for sustainable development and efforts aimed at tackling the growing impacts of climate change.

“Chaminade University is really quite honored to lead this important initiative charged with empowering STEM leaders for tomorrow from across Hawai‘i and the Pacific, equipping them with the cutting-edge tools they need to drive sustainable development projects,” said President Lynn Babington, PhD.

“This grant is part of a collective and exciting effort to meet a pivotal moment in our history by expanding opportunities to a new generation of change-makers. Our mission of service is foundational to everything we do at Chaminade and so we are proud to drive a culturally informed initiative ultimately designed to help build healthier, more resilient and socially just communities.”

The first ALL-SPICE programming and opportunities launched in the Fall.

Dr. Helen Turner, research director of the Chaminade United Nations CIFAL Honolulu Center and a professor of Biology, is principal investigator for ALL-SPICE along with Chong. She said the funding will focus on three central efforts: bolstering training and educating, conducting data science research on sustainable development projects, and building capacity (including infrastructure) for data analytics in Hawai‘i and the Pacific.

“This work takes a village,” Turner said, adding the grant was the result of years of collaboration between Chaminade and other institutions to step up programming and underscore the importance of data science to the community. The Chaminade-led consortium includes the University of Hawaii Data Science Institute, East-West Center and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

“The National Science Foundation identified the power of data analytics for education, research and industry. They use this phrase ‘harnessing the data revolution’ because right now we are all swimming in an ocean of data,” Turner said. “We can either drown as individuals, communities and society or we can swim and surf that wave—take data and turn it into wisdom, knowledge and action-based plans.”

Turner said that’s exactly what the Data Science program at Chaminade is focused on.

And the grant will exponentially increase that work, expanding opportunities to more students, community leaders and institutions so they can use data for the greater good. “Data and social justice go hand and hand. To me, it’s a very obvious and beautiful linkage,” Turner said.

For example, she says that health inequities are fundamentally a data problem—failing to get the right resources to the right people or not fully understanding the root causes for gaps in care. Environmental problems, economic development, educational gaps can be approached similarly.

“Because a big piece of this is meeting the needs of the community,” she added. “No university in the United States can keep up with the pace of demand for data scientists. We want our students to succeed, but we also don’t want our own organizations in Hawai‘i to be left behind.”

That’s why the grant will, in part, fund research or hands-on internships for students. Already, Chaminade students in data science are working on a plethora of important projects—looking at everything from maternal mortality in Pacific populations to recidivism in Hawai‘i.

“If you ask what is a data scientist, the answer is everything,” she said. “With data science, students undoubtedly can follow their personal passions and make a positive impact. This is ultimately a vehicle for students’ passions to change the world. It’s also about democratizing our relationship with data.”

CIFAL Honolulu Executive Director and Dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics Dr. Gail Grabowsky said data visualization and interpretation are a central focus of the grant’s programming. That’s because it’s not enough to analyze the data. Helping the community (especially non-data scientists) understand what the data says is just as important.

“We think data alone will change the world and it won’t,” said Grabowsky, who is also dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Chaminade. “What will change the world is many people working together on shared goals, using data along the way to inform policy and guide next steps.”

She added that CIFAL Honolulu envisions the Pacific Ocean as a “connector,” helping to spur conversations around both modern approaches and traditional knowledge and practices. Indigenous ways of knowing, Grabowsky added, could also bring about new perspectives and questions.

Dr. Lance Askildson, Chaminade provost, called the grant and its potential impact “incredibly significant.” He added, “This is really about creating a network of institutions across the Pacific, of which Chaminade is the lead, to provide education, training and research.”

He said a key part of the funding is working with community stakeholders to help them tell their own community stories with data. “Particularly here in the West, there is a tremendous amount of data being collected on us at all times of the day,” he said. “Being in control of your data is just like being in control of your Facebook profile—it’s a chance to tell a story with greater integrity that prioritizes your needs.”

ALL-SPICE co-Principal Investigator Dr. Kelly Gaither, the director of health analytics at TACC and a professor of Maternal Health at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, first started hearing about Chaminade’s work in data science in 2005 as part of a grant review committee.

What struck her the most, she said, is there was no tension between the pursuit of data science and traditional Hawaiian and Pacific knowledge and ways of knowing. “Chaminade was really trying to chop down any notion that Hawaiian science is not science,” she said. “This is the true definition of capacity building. Chaminade is really leading this, one community stakeholder and one student at a time.”

Gaither added she’s especially excited about the workforce opportunities the grant has to offer.

“We can dream big, peacefully coexist and all move forward,” she said. “That’s what is possible.”

Chaminade University Receives $10 Million Grant for United Nations Sustainability Center

August 18, 2022 by University Communications & Marketing

The National Science Foundation (NSF) selected Chaminade University to lead a groundbreaking $10 million, five-year grant project to create new leadership pathways into data science careers for students and working professionals across Hawaii and the Pacific region.

The grant is part of a comprehensive $39 million effort to establish four new NSF INCLUDES Alliances nationwide designed to bolster diversity and inclusion in scientific leadership, innovation and discovery.

With the help of the transformative funding, Chaminade University’s new United Nations sustainability center, CIFAL Honolulu, and Data Science program will spearhead the launch of the university’s new Alliance Supporting Pacific Impact through Computational Excellence (ALL-SPICE). Working with a consortium of partners, ALL-SPICE will focus on the application of data analytics to solve critical sustainability issues and promote sustainable development across the Pacific region. The program will also focus on workforce development, providing opportunities for skills building in data science to meet employer needs in this high-demand field.

The first Alliance programming will begin this September.

“Chaminade University is honored to lead this important initiative charged with empowering STEM leaders for tomorrow from across Hawaii and the Pacific, equipping them with the cutting-edge data analytics skills they need to drive sustainable development,” said Chaminade President Dr. Lynn Babington.

“This grant is part of a collective and exciting effort to meet a pivotal moment in our history by expanding opportunities to a new generation of change-makers. This program is founded in our mission of serving community needs and building d healthier, more resilient and socially just communities in Hawaii and the Pacific region.”

CIFAL Honolulu Executive Director Dr. Gail Grabowsky said ALL-SPICE will be “laser-focused” on data science as critical to helping Hawaii and Pacific region communities meet their sustainable development goals, including bolstering renewable energy, reducing inequality and forming sustainable communities.

“This project is about putting Pacific data in Pacific hands to effect regional change and develop the capacity for data-driven decision support,” Grabowsky said. “Our communities are facing big challenges and so this alliance is about helping tomorrow’s Hawaii and Pacific leaders to find big solutions.”

Dr. Helen Turner, research director of Chaminade’s CIFAL Honolulu Centre, is the principal investigator for ALL-SPICE along with Data Science Director Dr. Rylan Chong. She said the Data Science program at Chaminade has taken a community-focused approach from the start.

“Our data science faculty has a portfolio approach to data science education that meets students, working professionals and community members where they are to offer academic, training and informal learning programs,” she said. “NSF recognized the potential of applying this strategy across our Pacific region with a focus on using data analytics to promote sustainable development goals.”

The ALL-SPICE Alliance will have three central functions:

Offering training and education programs;
Conducting data science research on sustainable development;
And building capacity for data analytics, including with cyber infrastructure.

The Chaminade University-led consortium includes the University of Hawaii, East-West Center and the Texas Advanced Computing Center.

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Chaminade University of Honolulu believes in the power of education to drive positive change, broaden perspectives, and deepen our understanding of one another. With an emphasis on transformative service-learning experiences, we prepare students to serve as tomorrow’s leaders, inspiring and challenging them to use their minds and their hearts to help build stronger and more just communities. We are proud to serve as Hawai‘i’s only Marianist university and rely on these values to guide us in delivering a high-quality education with an individualized approach and a focus on excellence, innovation, and change. Established in 1955, we offer more than 30 undergraduate and graduate programs, including doctoral degrees in education, psychology, and nursing practice. Learn more at chaminade.edu.

Chaminade Hosts Pacific Region Data Science Challenge

May 17, 2022 by University Communications & Marketing

Rewarding. Difficult. Inspiring. Those were some of the words student participants used to describe their experiences in the inaugural Advanced Computing for Social Change Challenge in the Pacific, hosted earlier this spring by Chaminade University’s Data Science, Analytics and Visualization program.

Dr. Rylan Chong, director of the program, said about 20 students from across the Pacific—including Saipan and Guam—participated in the remote, week-long event along with six undergraduate mentors.

The challenge in March was held in coordination with similar events scattered across the country, Chong said, and with support from Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) and Texas Advanced Computing Center, whose supercomputer was used by student participants.

Chong said the challenges are meant to test participants’ data analysis and interpretation skills, creativity, innovation, and ability to work under pressure. Participants also get invaluable training and mentorship—all as part of a broader effort to help them connect real-world data to actionable solutions.

Over the course of the week, students identified a research question, pored over the relevant data, arrived at results, created data visualizations, and then presented their work. Along the way, they also attended workshops on everything from statistics to text mining in order to hone their skills.

He said the projects students worked on included a study of COVID-19 in Hawaii and an exploration of native birds of Haleakala. “Each project provided data sets for participants to derive their project from,” he said. “The data sets included thousands of records and results were used to inform researchers.”

He added that the underlying theme of the challenge was about building capacity and learning communities in the Pacific to “harness the power of technology and data to address” challenges.

Chaminade Data Science student Sarah Carroll ’24 jumped at the chance to participate in the competition to build on her skills and apply them. She focused on COVID-19 in Hawaii, text-mining Twitter data to analyze community sentiment on the virus and the government response.

“It was very rewarding to see that I am capable of implementing what I learned,” Carroll said, adding that she was thrilled to be able to put together a project and get immediate feedback on her presentation. “This experience really boosted my confidence in working with data.”

Punohu Keahi is a first-year student at Chaminade, majoring in Environmental Studies, and participated in hopes of learning more about how to turn big data sets into results that communities can actually use to make decisions. “My biggest reason for joining this program was to step out of my comfort zone,” Keahi said. “Getting this experience is something I will never forget.”

Keahi opted to dive into data from the Haleakala National Bird survey.

“I love native birds and I’m interested in knowing more about the different factors that could have caused the fluctuations in the bird population,” she said. “My biggest challenge during this program was figuring out how to code and then create different scatter plot and bar graphs.”

One of the greatest thrills? Using a supercomputer for the first time.

Armando Luna, a Data Science student at Chaminade, said the competition was tough—but a worthwhile experience. “The biggest challenge was ensuring I would have a presentable and complete project in time,” Luna said. “However, we had fantastic mentors who helped us through the week.”

Mentors like Dairian Balai ’22, who said she wanted to volunteer because of her own positive experiences at Advanced Computing for Social Change Challenges on the mainland. She was in the 2019 ACSC cohort and said the mentors were key to ensuring the event was filled with both learning and fun.

She said many of the students participating in this year’s challenge didn’t have any experience with coding, programming or working with big data sets. That meant they needed some extra help to ensure they didn’t get overwhelmed. “The students persevered and created incredible posters,” she said.

She added that what she enjoyed most about being a mentor was watching students grow in the challenge. “You can tell how much confidence they gained,” Balai said. “I also like seeing those great ‘aha!’ moments when they’re running into issues and then they finally make a breakthrough.”

Student Wins SC21 Data Science Competition

March 7, 2022 by University Communications & Marketing

Taylor Ishisaka loves to unlock the secrets hidden in data.

There’s nothing more satisfying or rewarding, she says, than translating big data sets into clear, actionable information that communities can use to understand themselves better or tackle existing problems anew. “The world of data science has so much to offer,” said the Chaminade senior.

That passion isn’t only infectious, it’s getting noticed.

Taylor Ishisaki reviewing data science information

Most recently, she was part of a team that took home top honors in the inaugural data science competition at SC21, one of the biggest international conferences on high-performance computing. The competition, held over two phases in October and November 2021, was designed to give students a chance to showcase their computing, problem-solving and data analysis skills in a team dynamic.

Ishisaka, who is a Ho’oulu Scholar and Data Science major at Chaminade, said the competition started with a meet-and-greet opportunity over Zoom followed by details on the expectations for participants. She was put into a team with students from around the nation, including Washington State University and Central Texas College.

The first phase of the competition required students to perform analysis on a data set using a high-performance computing cloud. Ishisaka said the task was designed to test participants’ time management skills, teamwork, and ability to work effectively in the cloud platform.

The data set was a compilation of agricultural and livestock data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture database. Ishisaka’s team looked at crop production and fertilization data over several years, and Ishisaka created a color-coded heat map showing changes over time. A teammate, meanwhile, crafted several graphs that showed crop and soy production over specific Census years.

Ishisaka and her teammates put together a report in order to move to Phase 2, during which participants were challenged to find their own datasets to highlight problems in specific regions. Ishisaka’s team focused on Missouri data, specifically looking at data on bison populations. They took a multi-state view, tying in figures on climate and other environmental factors in their analysis.

The challenges were tough enough, but Ishisaka’s team also lost members over the course of the competition. Two didn’t show up again after the initial Zoom session. A third team member dropped off the map in Phase 2. That left the original team of five with just two members.

“As there were only two of us left in the most critical phase, my team member and I met with our mentor for hours each day discussing our progress on the project and next steps,” Ishisaka said. “We had to retrace our steps and rediscover our project purpose in order to put together our presentation.”

It was no easy task—but Ishisaka wasn’t deterred.

“After hours of putting together our presentation and rearranging everything to make sure that our story flowed, we created a product that we were proud of,” she said, adding that she stayed up all night before presentation day so she could memorize her talking points and deliver a clear message.

She delivered the presentation via Zoom with the judges and other teams all there. When everything was done, she was proud to have completed what she set out to do—and wasn’t thinking all that much about whether she’d actually be recognized for her efforts. “I was honestly surprised when we won,” she said. “I attended presentations of the other competitors and their projects were phenomenal.”

Ishisaka said she’s very happy with what she and her teammate were able to accomplish.

“I decided to keep on going throughout the competition because for one, I was representing Chaminade. And secondly, I know that my progress in the competition was a reflection of the skills and values that I learned throughout my academic journey in data science,” she said.

Ishisaka added she’s not one to leave things unfinished.

“Once I commit to a project, I am in it for the long haul,” she said.

The same goes for her commitment to data science, a major she fell into after participating in the Supporting Pacific Indigenous Computing Excellence (SPICE) Summer Institute in Summer 2019. SPICE, a partnership between Chaminade and the Texas Advanced Computer Center, gives students from all different majors and backgrounds a chance to explore data science and its many applications.

Ishisaka said that she entered the SPICE program not knowing anything about data science, “or that it even existed.” She added, “The following semester, I went to academic advising and switched my major from biochemistry to data science, and honestly it was probably one of the best choices I ever made.”