Cohort 3, (Senior Fellow Cohort), Fall 2023 - Spring 2024

1. Stephen Bothwell (Senior Fellow): Stephen is a fourth-year graduate student in the Computer Science and Engineering program. Advised by David Chiang, he applies and extends natural language processing techniques in the context of low-resource languages—especially ancient ones. One branch of his research seeks to computationally capture rhetorical features (e.g., parallel structure) for the sake of stylistic analysis. Another strives to characterize diachronic sound change more precisely by improving methods for interpreting neural networks.
2. Jacob Swisher (2nd Year Senior Fellow): Jacob is a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of History. His research focuses on the entangled histories of people, animals, and commodities in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Basin. Jacob also has broad interests in environmental history, the history of the North American West, and the digital humanities.

Cohort 2, Fall 2022 - Spring 2023

1. Stephen Bothwell: Stephen is a third-year graduate student in the Computer Science and Engineering program. Advised by David Chiang, he applies and extends natural language processing techniques in the context of low-resource languages—especially ancient ones. One branch of his research seeks to computationally capture rhetorical features (e.g., parallel structure) for the sake of stylistic analysis. Another strives to characterize diachronic sound change more precisely by improving methods for interpreting neural networks. In the 2022-2023 academic year, he aims to create workshops which will introduce neural networks to those without a background in computer science. Mainly, he hopes to give those interested in interdisciplinary work a space to explore neural networks in more detail, highlighting both the strengths and the limitations of said networks.

   1. Talking Neural Networks: A Beginner's Guide
   2. Neural Networks for the Wordsmith: An Encounter in Python
   3. Talking Neural Networks: A Beginner's Guide
2. Elizabeth Brooks (senior fellow): Elizabeth is a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Biology. Her research is focused on using genomics techniques to investigate the impact of environmental change on phenotypically divergent natural populations. It is her goal to deliver a workshop that leverages the experience that many researchers have in R programming to reinforce best practices in data analysis. This will lead to learning command line basics, and how the command line can be used with R and BASH scripting to develop custom data analysis pipelines.

   1. Biostatistical Analysis of Omics Data in the R Programming Language
   2. Biostatistical Analysis of Omics Data in the R Programming Language
3. Sally Hansen: Sally Hansen is a third-year graduate student in the English Department, and her research examines the rhythmic transmission of memory and desire in 20th century American poetry. She’s excited to develop a workshop that explores pedagogical applications of digital sound studies. The workshop will provide theoretical avenues and practical support for instructors who seek to incorporate audio projects into their syllabi and research.

   1. Introduction to Sound Design I: Editing with Audacity
   2. Introduction to Sound Design II: Solo and Group Recording in Audacity
   3. Teaching with Audio: Planning and Assessing Sound Projects in the Classroom
4. Shuyue Li: Shuyue is a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Biology. She studies the dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems under climate change and human influence, with a focus on the factors constraining carbon cycling. As a NFCDS fellow Shuyue aims to develop a workshop that introduces open-source platforms to do spatial-related analysis and visualization. This will include the introduction to various R-based tools, such as leaflet and Rshiny. Her goal for the workshop is to assist participants from various backgrounds in conducting spatial-based quantitative analysis or visualizing their research outcomes over a space.

   1. What in the World is GIS?
   2. Introduction to Geospatial R
   3. Introduction to Geospatial R
   4. Making a Map in R
5. Jacob Swisher (senior fellow): Jacob is a third-year graduate student in the Department of History. His research focuses on the entangled histories of people, animals, and commodities in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Basin. Jacob also has broad interests in environmental history, the history of the North American West, and the digital humanities. During the 2022-2023 academic year, Jacob is excited about continuing to develop workshops for graduate and undergraduate students who are interested in learning to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to conduct scholarly research and communicate with a variety of audiences.

   1. Telling Your Spatial Story with ArcGIS StoryMaps
   2. Getting Started with ArcGIS Field Maps
   3. Telling Your Spatial Story with ArcGIS StoryMaps
   4. Mapping with ArcGIS Online
   5. Introduction to Geospatial Analysis in ArcGIS Online

Cohort 1, Fall 2021 — Spring 2022

1. Elizabeth Brooks: Elizabeth is a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Biology. Her research is focused on using genomics techniques to investigate the impact of environmental change on phenotypically divergent natural populations. It is her goal to deliver a workshop that leverages the experience that many researchers have in R programming to reinforce best practices in data analysis. This will lead to learning command line basics, and how the command line can be used with R and BASH scripting to develop custom data analysis pipelines.
2. Kenya Lee: Kenya is a third-year graduate student in the Sociology program. Her research focuses on school discipline, institutions, and the school-to-prison nexus. As a NFCDS fellow, Kenya aims to develop a workshop that encourages local high school students to think critically about data and how it shapes the world, through activities that focus on how students can start their own critical data analysis and visualization work. Her goal for the workshop series is for every participant to see themselves as a social scientist and critical consumer of data.
3. Jacob Swisher: Jacob is a second-year graduate student in the Department of History. His research focuses on the entangled histories of people, animals, and commodities in the early modern Rio Grande Basin. Jacob also has broad interests in environmental history, the history of the North American West, and the digital humanities. During the 2021-2022 academic year, Jacob is excited about developing a workshop for humanities students who are interested in learning to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to conduct scholarly research and communicate with a variety of audiences.
4. Craig Waitt: Craig is a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. He is currently working with William Schneider in the Chemical Engineering department, where they have been developing computational models to understand molecular structure and catalytic reactivity at the atomic level. His goal as a NFCDS fellow is to design and implement a workshop or workshop series that introduces students to the basics of LaTeX: How do you create a document? How can you change the document format? How do you compile (or export) your document? This workshop will provide introductory guidance that will help students create publications, resumes, and letters in LaTeX.

Yuyi (Wynona) Wan: Wynona is a second-year graduate student in the Department of Physics, specializing in experimental particle physics. Her research work with professor Kevin Lannon and Randal Ruchti focuses on the CMS experiment at CERN and scintillating material studies for the hadron calorimeter. While academic life is not merely a unitary practice of course materials, Wan is also interested in enhancing her abilities as a speaker and instructor. The NFCDS fellowship provides a great opportunity to inspect, explore and learn. Through developing and delivering workshops, fellows are able to improve their instructing, lecturing, and communicating skills that are crucial to all career circumstances. Wan aims to design workshops that bring physics-related digital knowledge such as circuits, electromagnetic waves, optics, etc., to the Notre Dame non-physics community. It’s important to her that the subject she is passionate about can also bring excitement and change to her students’ view of the world.