Past Projects

The list below is a collection of projects done by MCDC students and faculty for various community partners. Each of these projects began with a community organization submitting a Request for Data Services (RDS) and the students submitting a Data Application for Undergraduates (DAU). We hope you’ll be inspired by the work we’ve done!

Project: Chicago Workers Cottage Initiative: Depaul 359

Students in ENV 359 collaborated with the staff of the Chicago Workers Cottage Initiative to provide estimates of the total number of workers cottages in the City of Chicago. Workers cottages have historical architectural significance and also continue to provide a...

Project: SYNCERE

MCDC students worked with Project SYNCERE to assimilate and visualize data through renewable, digital dash- and storyboards that facilitate support, participation, informed decision-making, and impact assessment. One public-facing storyboard was developed with Python...

Project: Bethany House of Hospitality

https://sites.northwestern.edu/mcdc/files/2024/10/Bethany-Overview.mp4...

Project: Destiny Outreach

Destiny Outreach Final Presentation

Project: FrackTracker Alliance

FrackTracker-MCDC Summer Internship

Project: Food Insecurity in Joe Daviess County

Partner: Joe Daviess County University: Northeastern Illinois University Course Title: CS 322 Project Type: Practicum Instructor: Francisco Iacobelli  Video: Food Insecurity in Joe Daviess County Video: Churches & Food Insecurity in Joe Daviess...

Project: Black McDonalds Owners of America

Project Synopsis: Students worked to support the Food for the Body & Spirit Turkey Giveaway; where participating locations gave away turkeys and other foods in disenfranchised communities throughout Chicagoland. Students helped make a printable brochure that...

Project: Morton Arboretum -American Sycamore

Project Synopsis:  Welcome to Morton Group 1’s RMarkdown Notebook! Here, we will explain our methods for the community project we did in collaboration with the Morton Arboretum. For this project, we were tasked with using exploratory data analysis to examine data...

Project: DePaul-ENV 403 Final Project Morton 2-22

Project Synopsis: American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) Analysis at The Morton Arboretum ENV 403 Dr. Mark Potosnak Team Morton – Sierra, Jackie, and Nicola March 14th, 2022 The objective of this ENV 403 Final Project was to conduct exploratory data analysis...

Project: Lift The Ban Coalition

This project was done for Lift the Ban Coalition, an non-profit organization with the goal of lifting the ban on rent control in Illinois. Lift the Ban Coalition wants to enforce rent control to make rent more affordable in Illinois. However, the counterargument is...

Project: Morton Arboretum, Tree Observatory

Project Synopsis: The Tree Observatory project utilizes numerous sensors to collecting data simultaneously from trees and the environment. The goals are to understand the physiology and functions of a tree, and to investigate how these processes interact with...

Project: NU- STAT 390- My Chi My Future

Project Synopsis:MCDC practicum students worked with community partner City of Chicago on the My Chi My Future project. This project aims to understand the youth opportunity landscape in the City of Chicago, specifically where gaps in programming exist for youth...

Project: Civic Lab- TIF Illumination Project 2023

Project Synopsis: This project was produced through the Metropolitan Chicago Data-science Corps (MCDC) which is a collaboration of non-profit or community organizations and data science students. We worked with The CivicLab to illuminate the City of Chicago finances...

Project: Morton Arboretum Data Cleaning

  Project Synopsis: Morton Arboretum asked us to clean the data of tree species in the Chicagoland area and make the dataset easier to understand using Python and plans to use the cleaned data for future projects. ●It is a street tree dataset collected by The...

Project: Cook County Industrial Composting

Project Synopsis: During the summer of 2022, four undergraduate students from DePaul University (2), Northeastern Illinois University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign worked with Dr. Mark Potosnak as part of the National Science Foundation-funded...

Project: Equiticity

Project Synopsis: The title of the research is “Understanding user disparity in Micromobility adoption and patterns: Chicago divvy system”. This collaborative research examines the usage patterns of the Divvy bikesharing system in Chicago. The project focuses on two...

Project: Nature Conservancy: Prescribed Fire Council

Project Synopsis: Illinois habitats from the forests and glades of southern Illinois to the expanses of prairie, savannas, and wetlands in central and northern Illinois evolved with regular wildland fire. Many of these fires were intentional management by Indigenous...