ICS News Archive

Informatics Ph.D. Student Mustafa Hussain Named i3 Teaching Fellow

The iSchool Inclusion Institute (i3) has named informatics Ph.D. student Mustafa Hussain as one of its 2018 Teaching Fellows for its summer program, comprising two weeks of instruction in research design and programming. i3 is an undergraduate research and leadership development program that prepares students from underrepresented populations for graduate study and careers in the information sciences. The 2018 Fellows were selected from a competitive pool of candidates.

“Diversity in computing is really important to me,” says Mustafa, “so I was excited to learn that I would have the opportunity this summer to give a leg up to students who traditionally would have had a harder time getting and staying involved in computing.”

Mustafa, along with Brittany Ann Kos, another Teaching Fellow from the University of Colorado Boulder, will be teaching Python and introducing some advanced tools for data management and analysis. Such tools include OpenRefine, a useful tool for “cleaning” data prior to analysis; Tableau, which makes certain data visualizations easy to create; and JASP, an open-source tool for statistical analysis.

“We will be emphasizing that, despite all the hype and mysticism surrounding ‘big data’ today, there is really no magic in knowledge production,” says Mustafa. “Anyone, with the right training in research methods and ethics, can make use of some fairly simple and inexpensive tools to address questions important to social equity.”

— Shani Murray