Working with this project I get exposure to a lot of development literature and some really great professors, and I get to do a lot of hands-on work in the area of development and work directly with grad students and professors.
Degree
Computer Science ’18
Slums in general are very poorly understood by development literature and by governments. What we’re working to do is start a process of understanding how slums form and how they develop over time.
My role personally is dealing with a lot of the data that we collect. We go into slums and we interview households and area leaders, and we collect a lot of survey data about the history of the slum, the personal backgrounds of the people and physical features of the slum. We’re trying to figure out what are the big differences that distinguish different kinds of slums. That involves working a lot with the data and trying to cluster slums and their physical features, the goal being that once we have these clusters we can understand what’s causing some slums to develop and some slums not to develop.
I also do a lot of work studying satellite images, trying to see if we can differentiate between kinds of slums based on what they look like from above.
I’ve been interested in development for a long time, and eventually I hope to work in a career that combines computer science with the field of international development. So working with this project I get exposure to a lot of development literature and some really great professors, and I get to do a lot of hands-on work in the area of development and work directly with grad students and professors. It’s been a great experience. I have a lot more background on the nature of how slums form and how urban poverty develops, and I’m looking forward to learning more about it.
