Students Strengthen Open Data Projects
2026年7月1日
Open data: it's not just about technology. It's about people. And this semester we've been strengthening that human element by building out our internship partnerships. We've supported eight interns across three projects with two partner organizations. And they've produced some pretty amazing work.
Two of our projects were through Boston University’s Spark! program, which pairs undergraduate and graduate Data Science student teams with local public and private partners to tackle real-world projects. The student teams are organized much like a workplace, with a project manager, designer, technical lead, and other roles as needed for the project.
One of our projects with BU Spark! was an intensive, one-week course over BU’s spring break. We sent the students a description of our project in advance and met with them throughout the week as they developed their solution. In this case, we asked for a way of monitoring our datasets through their metadata – whether they are up to date, appropriately tagged and licensed, have complete descriptions, and other best practices. We left the format open-ended. The students developed a Metadata Health Dashboard that downloads the metadata, evaluates it on several axes, uses AI to grade it on those axes, and produces a dynamic visual report – all in one week. As it happens, our Strategic Plan specifically calls for a tool like this: it names a prototype "dataset health dashboard" for monitoring dataset freshness and quality as one of its innovation goals. The students delivered exactly that, and you can explore their dashboard.
Our second BU Spark! project was a semester-long partnership, giving us much more time to collaborate. For that project we told them about a more pie-in-the-sky idea we’d been talking about – a “space-time viewer” where users could see Cambridge’s data not only on a spatial map, but also on some sort of time map or timeline. Over the course of the semester, we met with the team regularly and were impressed with how they took the idea and ran with it. They created a dashboard called the Cambridge Space-Time Data Explorer, which you can play with here. The tool allows users to play the map like movie and watch the data change over time. We also had the opportunity to attend the Spark! demo day at the end of the semester and see the many student projects presented live.
Our most hands-on experience this semester was with our in-person intern, Mohamud Suleyman, who came to us through Cambridge’s Next Up program. He contributed in many ways to many projects, but his largest contribution was refreshing the update logic for our Dogs of Cambridge dataset and creating a brand-new explorer dashboard for it. This tool allows users to explore Cambridge’s dog population visually, through neighborhood maps and interactive charts, and to filter by breed and year. Users can also see how different dog names have risen and fallen in popularity over time.
Working with interns has been one of the highlights of our year. Their creativity, curiosity, and new perspectives challenged us to think differently and to pursue projects we might not otherwise have had time for. We're grateful to Boston University's Spark!, the Next Up program, and especially to the students themselves for their hard work and enthusiasm. Strengthening partnerships like these is one of the six priorities in our 2026–2028 Strategic Plan, and this semester showed us exactly why. It's an area we intend to double down on in the years ahead, deepening the relationships we've built and exploring new partner programs along the way.
