Seeking Data Science Capstone Community Partners

Department of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering
Michigan State University
http://cmse.msu.edu/cmse495

The Department of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering (CMSE) at Michigan State University (MSU) is seeking community partners¹ for both Fall of 2026 and Spring of 2027. Community partners provide real world projects for students in the Data Science Capstone Course. The broad goals of this capstone course are: (1) to provide practical, team-based, project development experiences to MSU’s senior undergraduate data science students, and (2) to help our partners make connections with data science students that may support the community partner’s technical and/or recruiting needs.

If you are interested please considering filling out the MSU Data Science Community Partner Connection Form and we will get back to you!

Who can be a community partner?

Typically our partners come from Industry, Governmental Agencies and Non-profit institutions. Our partners have ideas/problems and are looking for student teams to help solve their data science projects. We are seeking a variety of projects ideas and generally prefer ones that have one or more of the following properties:

• Social impact
• Impact to the State of Michigan
• Direct impact of students and their interests

Overview of Projects and Expectations

Community partners will have the opportunity to work with the course instructor to develop a data science project appropriate for a team of 4-5 seniors who have completed most of their Data Science degree at MSU. These students are familiar with multiple programming languages (e.g., Python, R, MATLAB, Bash, C++) and have experience in a range of data science skills and topics, including; databases, data manipulation, statistical analysis, optimization methods, computational modeling, large scale computing, scientific visualization, and machine learning. Each member of the team will work approximately 10-15 hours a week during the 10-12 week project period (totaling 400-900 person-hours per project). Unless the community partner makes other arrangements in advance, students will use university computational resources to complete the project, and results will be shared publicly (final reports, presentations, etc.).

Ideal projects include each element of the data science pipeline, from data collection to presentation, as outlined above. However, projects may focus more heavily in some areas than others, depending on the community partner’s goals. Examples of the types of projects that may be appropriate include:

• Community partners have an existing dataset and some key questions: students will write software to read in the data, generate models (e.g., using Machine Learning), and show results - all with the goal of trying to answer the community partner’s questions.
• Community partners have an existing dataset, but no specific questions: students will build an interface to parse the data, generate models, visualize the dataset, and explore the data, aiming to work with the community partners identify interesting insights in the data.
• Community partners have questions, but no data: students will generate, query, or mine desired data from existing resources (such as the internet), clean up the data, visualize data, and apply models, to identify appropriate datasets that are able to answer the community partner’s questions.

In an effort to build relationships and try to obtain the best project outcomes, community partners are encouraged to engage with students and instructors regularly. At a minimum, community partners are asked to meet monthly with student teams and provide weekly feedback by email. Additional informational, networking, and/or project-related activities will be available on a weekly basis for community partners interested in more engagement. For highly engaged community partners, the time commitment is expected to average 1.5 hours a week (~20 hours total).

Overview of Timeline and Next Steps

Interested community partners are encouraged to contact Dr. Dirk Colbry (colbrydi@msu.edu) as far in advance as possible. An initial meeting will be scheduled to share more information and determine whether this opportunity is a good fit for the community partner’s interests and needs.

In general, community partners who choose to move forward would work with the instructor to complete the following tasks during Summer Semester 2025:

• Work with Dr. Colbry to develop an appropriate project description.
• Prepare any necessary agreements for the project (e.g., expectations about intellectual property, non-disclosure agreements, software/hardware resources, data/information security restrictions)
• Identify an individual within the community partner’s organization to act as the primary point of contact and “client” for the student project team.
• (optional) Provide a logo to include on the CMSE 495 course website.
• (optional) Approve a press release and article about the partnership that will be posted on the CMSE department website, and may be picked up and distributed by other news outlets.

Key tasks to support capstone team during the semester include:

• Provide regular feedback on project deliverables, and guidance and mentoring to the student team during the semester.
• Provide feedback on the final project report (including a video and support materials), which will be provided to the community partners at the end of the project.
• (optional) Share information about the community partner’s organization at a seminar for appropriate MSU audiences (e.g., undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, faculty, or staff in CMSE, the College of Engineering, and/or the College of Natural Science)
• (optional) Participate in networking activities with students from the course (beyond the community partner’s project team, as desired)

The tentative project timeline for Fall 2025 / Spring 2026 semesters is outlined below:

Potential community partners should fill out the MSU Data Science Community Partner Connection Form. If you would like you can also reach out to Dr. Dirk Colbry (colbrydi@msu.edu) directly.

¹Note: In addition to project descriptions, project partnership typically includes a $5,000 donation to the CMSE department; this donation may be waived for projects partnered by units at MSU, non-profits or in the state government