Research

CDSS Discovery Program

CDSS Discovery incubates and accelerates high impact research in academic, government, non-profit, and industry projects across the globe while providing UC Berkeley students real world research experiences and mentorship opportunities. It is a partnership between BIDS, DSUS, and D-Lab.

In 2015, the program was launched at Berkeley Institute for Data...

Innovate For Health

Breaking Down the Silos and Building an Innovation Bridge in Healthcare

At Innovate For Health (I4H), housed within the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS), we are dedicated to transforming healthcare through advanced data science and transdisciplinary collaboration. Founded in 2019, we focus on leveraging health data to address urgent healthcare needs.

Our Mission

We aim to inspire, educate, and support an exceptional group of data scientists to apply their skills towards significant health challenges. Our fellows...

Northern California Avalanche Prediction

Backcountry skiing and snowboarding are becoming popular ways to recreate on snow outside of a ski resort setting. However, there are additional dangers that come from skiing on ungroomed snow outside of a ski resort. Avalanche forecasters integrate daily snow observations with weather forecasts and snowpack history to issue daily estimates of how likely avalanches are. For this project, BIDS Global Environmental Change Research Scholar R.J. Cody Markelz collaborates with the...

Building a National Database to Monitor Prosecutors’ Responses to Police Misconduct

Kyla Bourne is developing a national database to scrutinize prosecutors' decisions in cases of police misconduct, particularly in fatal use-of-force incidents and in-custody deaths. This database is a crucial tool for stakeholders analyzing legal accountability and the frequency of criminal charges against officers in such cases. Bourne is scraping and coding thousands of prosecutorial memos, utilizing both qualitative coding and advanced machine learning...

Legislative Reform in the Midwest – A New Approach to Gun Offenses

Kyla Bourne's research in the Midwest focuses on how first-time gun offenses are criminally sanctioned. This reform is particularly significant in urban areas like Chicago, where over 90% of cases charged involve black men. Her research is pivotal in understanding how legislative changes can impact probation use, technical violations, and how concurrent charges are handled. This research offers an evaluation of gun law enforcement and it's social implications.

iSamples: Internet of Samples

BIDS Research Affiliate Neil Davies (NSF 2004642) and colleagues at Columbia University (NSF 2004839), the University of Arizona (NSF 2004562), and the University of Kansas (...

Sampling Nature: A Network to Enhance the Natural History Value Chain for Sustainability Science

BIDS Research Affiliate Neil Davies is co-PI for a new NSF grant (NSF 2129268), starting in 2021, entitled Sampling Nature: A Network to Enhance the Natural History Value Chain for Sustainability Science. Through a series of thematic workshops and regular virtual events, Sampling Nature RCN will...

Estimated Displacement Risk Model

In June 2022, BIDS’ Tim Thomas (Research Training Lead for Berkeley Computational Social Science Program) and his team at Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project (UDP) released a first-of-its-kind machine learning model that predicts the risk of low-income renter displacement at the neighborhood level. With over a year of development, the...

Impact of Racism on Trajectories of Substance Use, Mental Health and Legal System Contact from Adolescence to Young Adulthood

BIDS Faculty Affiliate Erin M. Kerrison, with colleagues from UCSF and Brown University, were awarded a 5-year (May 2022 – Feb 2027) $3.7M National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) grant to investigate The Impact of Racism on Trajectories of Substance Use, Mental Health and Legal System Contact from Adolescence to Young Adulthood.

Racial and...

FAIR Island Project

The FAIR Island Project is building a model research data management system that feeds data across stakeholders, linking metadata, repositories and institutions, and allowing for notifications and verification, real-time reporting, automated compliance, and guaranteed provenance. This system will provide a unique, controlled environment where research is coordinated (through the Tetiaroa Society) with an optimal data policy for open access, mandatory registration requirements for all research projects, and data...