Brown University Data Science Institute

Summer is still in full swing here at Brown! We found a sunny day this week to gather our students and faculty here during the summer for popsicles and some fun! Thanks everyone who dropped by our summer social!

Campus may be quiet during the summer, but at the Data Science Institute, we're busy reflecting on our year full of important milestones for DSI and planning for a great new year starting in the fall. DSI is proud to continue being an integral center for computational sciences and humanities at Brown through our innovative educational programs, support across campus for data science research, interdisciplinary programming, and dedicated spaces for collaboration.

We can't wait for another great year at the Data Science Institute at Brown!

Alt text:
Highlights from 2025-2026
In the past year, the Data Science Institute has...
- Launched our new Online Master’s in Data Science: Policy, Governance, and Society with an inaugural cohort of 24 students,
- Welcomed new, distinguished faculty members including our new Institute Director, Dr. Brenda Rubenstein, PhD, and Dr. Tomo Lazovich, PhD, JD,
- Awarded more than ten exciting DSI Seed & Collaborative Research Grants to scholars across campus,
- Initiated our new Early-Career Breakthrough Faculty Awards and more than ten Data Science Working Groups, run by students and faculty across the university,
- Co-hosted the first-ever student Health Data Fest with SPH, transforming environmental datasets into actionable strategies for tackling the growing threat of toxic cyanobacteria blooms,
- Hosted expert guest speakers, including Yann LeCun and Celia Merzbacher,
- Launched our External Advisory Committee of industry experts who will help bridge the gap between the university and the technological landscape...
- ...And in collaboration with ARIA, established a new AI Commons for the University in the Barus Building.

DSI is welcoming two new excellent additions to our faculty, starting today! Join us in welcoming Dr. Larry Han, Assistant Professor of Data Science and Biostatistics, and Dr. Ben Savitzky, Assistant Professor of the Practice for Math/Deep Learning.

Dr. Han comes to us from Northeastern University, where he served as an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, alongside an appointment as an Affiliate Investigator at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center. Dr. Han’s research centers on creating innovative statistical and machine learning methods to utilize real-world data to improve public health and clinical medicine. His work specifically focuses on developing robust and targeted estimators for learning causal effects from large-scale observational studies and randomized trials, with broader interests spanning federated learning, data integration, and survival analysis. Dr. Han earned his PhD and AM in Biostatistics from Harvard University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. A highly decorated scholar, his academic background also includes an MPhil from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, an MA from Tsinghua University as a Schwarzman Scholar, and a BS from UNC-Chapel Hill as a Morehead-Cain Scholar.

Dr. Savitzky earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University. Most recently, he has served as a Principal Investigator and Senior Scientist at h-Bar Instruments, following several years as a postdoctoral scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's National Center for Electron Microscopy. Dr. Savitzky’s research bridges the physical sciences and data science, focusing on experimental methods, reconstruction algorithms, and open-source software tools for scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). His professional career also reflects a strong dedication to education, spanning early-career experience as a high school mathematics and physics teacher to university-level instruction as a teaching assistant and research mentor.

This week at DSI/CCMB, we hosted a collaborative research symposium with the Brown RNA Center that brought scholars together to discuss the intersection of computational methods and RNA research at Brown.

Over the course of the day-long symposium featuring talks from faculty and students, discussion sessions, and a panel on collaborative research, scholars from across the university addressed questions about how developing computational methods can enable biological discovery.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this great day of learning and collaboration!

Recordings of talks from this event will be posted to the DSI YouTube channel.

Congratulations to CCMB PhD students Jessy Patricoski-Chavez and Jacob Marglous on receiving NIH F30/F31 training grants this spring!

CCMB PHD student Jessy Patricoski-Chavez (advisor: Ece Uzun) was recently been awarded an NIH F31 training grant. Through her research project, "Deep Learning for Multi-Omics-Based Prediction of Cancer Recurrence and Treatment Non-Response," Jessy will develop explainable deep learning models incorporating genomic, clinical, and protein-protein interaction data to provide valuable insights into the progression and treatment of glioma, lung adenocarcinoma, and breast carcinoma.

CCMB MD/PHD student Jacob Marglous (advisor: Jeff Bailey) was recently been awarded an NIH F30 training grant. Through Jake's research project, entitled "Improving computational detection and genotyping of copy number variants in small complex genomes: application to high throughput sequencing in the parasite Plasmodium falciparum," he will benchmark and improve methods for copy number variation detection for malaria parasites, gaining insight into the spread of drug resistance in Africa.

Congratulations to all of our students graduating this spring! Thank you to everyone who joined us for our festivities during 2026 Commencement Weekend, including our celebratory undergraduate lunch, master's dinner, Commencement panel on "How do we reclaim our humanity in an AI-driven world?", and alumni mixer! It was so wonderful to celebrate with you all!

Graduating student spotlight: Asher Labovich ✨

Asher Labovich is a graduating senior in Applied Math (with Honors) and International and Public Affairs. Asher has spent his time at Brown exploring applications of mathematics and machine learning, starting a machine-learning-driven election prediction and analysis platform called 24cast with the Brown Political Review, and completing a senior thesis on the mathematical underpinnings of looped transformers.

Asher is the recipient of the Data Science Institute's 2026 Excellence in Data Science Research Award, recognizing his remarkable technical contributions to the field, including his single-author publication in Transactions on Machine Learning Research regarding algorithmic improvements for gradient-boosted decision trees.

Asher is grateful for all the passionate, smart, kind people he has met during his time at Brown. He will be starting at Liquid AI in Boston as a research engineer following graduation.

Explore all our student spotlights: https://dsi.brown.edu/news/2026-05-07/2026-graduating-student-spotlights

Graduating student spotlight: Sissy Han✨

Sissy Han is a graduating senior in computational biology. During her time at Brown, Sissy conducted computational biology research in Will Fairbrother’s lab and became passionate about using computational methods and multi-omic data to generate meaningful biological insights. Outside the classroom and the lab, Sissy found a second family on Brown’s Women’s Golf Team. This fall, Sissy will begin a Ph.D. in Computational Biology and Biomedical Informatics at Yale University. She encourages current and future students to explore Brown, explore Providence, and say yes to every opportunity they can!

Graduating student spotlight: Megan Carlson ✨

Megan Carlson is a graduating senior whose research focuses on functional genomics, gene regulation, and the 3D genome. During her time at Brown, Megan conducted genomics research in the Erica Larschan lab, where she investigated sex-specific nuclear organization in Drosophila and developed the project into her honors thesis. Outside of research, Megan led Brown Puzzle Club and Brown Puzzlehunt, helped organize Yarnaholics@Brown, and performed with the Wind Symphony.

This fall, Megan Carlson will begin a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics at Harvard University. She is grateful for the mentorship and community that shaped her time at Brown and for the flexibility of the open curriculum, which allowed her to explore new interests every semester.

Read Megan's full spotlight on DSI News: https://dsi.brown.edu/news/2026-05-07/2026-graduating-student-spotlights

Graduating student spotlight: Skylar Sargent Walters ✨

Skylar is a graduating senior passionate about exploring viruses through computational approaches and applying language processing techniques to infectious disease research. Skylar is going on to pursue a Ph.D. in Computational Biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Outside of research, Skylar has loved engaging in the student music scene with their banjo, participating in the Old Time String Band, and joining a rock band, Log Lady.