WISCURDS (Wisconsin Undergraduate Research in Data Science) is a campus-wide research opportunity at UW-Madison that connects undergraduate students with faculty, businesses, and community organizations that propose projects suitable for teams of student researchers.
WISCURDS research projects focus on open-ended, data-related problems, challenges, and analytical questions that project proposers have faced or encountered but aren’t necessarily sure how to solve or answer—or haven’t had time to tackle among competing priorities. These tend to be novel problems where students can contribute to new or improved solutions. These project examples illustrate the kinds of problems addressed by WISCURDS student researchers.
WISCURDS screens undergraduate students for the skills necessary to participate in data-driven, data science, machine learning, GenAI, or related research, and trains them in these skills, when necessary.. WISCURDS then matches and places students with project proposers. The primary goal is for undergraduate student researchers, working in small groups, to study and build potential solutions to the project proposer’s problem, challenge, or question.
The program is an evolution of a successful initiative that began with the College of Engineering, and it is now being adopted and grown campus-wide by the Data Science Institute and its affiliates.