Arts and Sciences Fellows Spend Summer Research Projects – URI News

KINGSTON, RI – July 1, 2021 – Was Socrates a man or a god? How can you remove societal biases from machine learning? How should solitary confinement in prisons be reformed?

These are just a few of the 11 research projects being undertaken this summer by the University of Rhode Island’s College of Arts and Science fellows.

The summer scholarship program encourages students majoring in the humanities and natural sciences to participate in research, scientific, or creative projects under the direction of a faculty member for up to 10 weeks. This year, the program awards $ 28,000 in scholarships that support approximately 2,400 hours of research for students in fields such as criminology and criminal justice, political science, computer science, and philosophy.

In addition to support from the College of Arts and Sciences’ RhodyNow Fund and its Deans Excellence Foundation, the fellowship program is supported by a generous gift from Bob and Renamarie DiMuccio in honor of President David M. Dooley. When President Dooley retired in late July, the DiMuccios wanted to recognize his leadership in transforming URI over the past 12 years with a gift to support undergraduate research experiences that had a visible impact on students and a path for their future Pave the way for success.

Hannah Beaucaire ’22 majoring in Political Science and Criminology and Criminal Justice Gardiner, Maine, will spend the summer researching the practice of solitary confinement in US prisons. Working with Assistant Professor Natalie Pifer, Beaucaire will examine large-scale reforms her home state is enacting to see if the reforms should be adopted at the national level.

“One of the reasons I became interested in studying solitary confinement was because of the extreme physiological consequences that it is known to cause,” she said. “For such an extreme practice, I find solitary confinement under-regulated.”

The end result of their research will be an online platform that includes short videos telling a story of solitary confinement, its aftermath, and the reforms Maine is trying to provide. She plans to use social media to generate interest in the website that she hopes will serve as an educational and promotional tool.

“Without the cash prize, I would have spent most of the time in a vacation job,” she says, “but now I can use that time to study something that I find really exciting.”

To the John Mancini The summer of ’22 is spent reading the dialogues of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato to determine whether Plato viewed his contemporary philosopher Socrates as a god or a mortal. Plato, who lived from about 428 to 348 BC. Lived, wrote about 35 dialogues. Socrates was a major figure in many.

How do you determine a person’s divinity?

Mancini, a philosophy and political science major West, will look at Plato’s writings to find out what he viewed as gods and the properties of his “forms,” ​​his theory of the metaphysical structure of the universe. He will also look at secondary sources to answer what makes a person divine, godlike, or a “form.”

“The forms make things the way they are and explain what things are in themselves,” he said. “For example, the form of beauty is responsible for all things that contain beauty; the shape of size is the reason that some things are considered big. Plato’s theory basically answers the why question: I am beautiful because I participate in the beautiful; I am tall because I participate in tallness. “

Mancini will do research and discuss his conclusions with Professor Doug Reed, who specializes in ancient philosophy and plans to write an article explaining his findings.

“If my results are published, other philosophers can push me back and criticize me constructively,” he said. “This way I can develop my position better – should I need it. Philosophy is a discussion, and after I draw my conclusions, I’m sure someone will contradict me. I welcome any resistance so that philosophers can gain a fuller understanding of the Platonic dialogues. “

This summer, Jacob Afonso ’22, a computer science major, will explore fairness and bias in machine learning models under the direction of Assistant Professor Sarah Brown. The aim of the project is to test and find ways to remove bias from the models.

“Societal biases often exist in the data used to build machine learning models,” said Afonso, who works in. lives Smithfield. “When using skewed data, the resulting model used for any type of prediction will have these underlying biases.

“I wanted to investigate this because I believe this is one of the biggest areas of machine learning that makes people skeptical of its effectiveness,” he added. “It is also important for the future of equality for all groups of people as the use of machine learning continues to grow.”

Afonso’s research includes reading papers on the subject and learning code libraries that contain the code for the various machine learning algorithms. He will use these to build and test fair models. Ultimately, the outcome of his research will provide various ideas for eliminating prejudice, along with an analysis of the best and worst of them, he said.

Other 2021 Arts & Science Fellows are:

Mia Giglietti ’23, from West Hartford, Connecticutwho studies political science and economics with a minor in Spanish, analyzes the economic literature of the 20th^the Century to examine the elite links between corporate boards and their links with government agencies to see how those links benefit these companies.

“I wanted to take part because I’ve always wanted to learn more about how corporations and economic / political corruption work in order to maintain the power of the big corporations and the rich,” says Giglietti, who works with assistant professor Nina Eichacker. “I think it is crucial to understand these concepts in the era of severe income inequality that we are currently experiencing.”

Samantha Murphy ’22, from Cumberland, who is studying Applied Economics with a minor in Music, will work with Associate Professor Smita Ramnarain to compare public health disasters to other types of disasters and to study how health disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic interact with other crises and social inequalities, and how they have gender implications.

“I wanted to do this research because of my growing interest in heterodox economics,” Murphy said. “The scholarship gives me the opportunity to do research under the direction of a faculty member who is familiar with the areas that I would like to continue studying at URI after my bachelor’s degree.”

Jason Phillips ’23, from Barrington, Illinois, who studies English, journalism, and writing and rhetoric will examine how students are aware of the way colleges and universities treat teachers. Phillips plans to interview students across the country about their understanding and feelings about the subject over the summer and plans to publish a research paper.

“I chose to investigate this because a large part of the faculty are treated badly, but the students often don’t understand the problem,” said Phillips, who works with Professor Carolyn Betensky. “It’s important to me to understand how students really think about how their professors are treated in their universities.”

Abigail Dodd ’22, from Wakefield, Rhode Island, a major in history, gender, and women’s studies, will identify primary sources from the URI Distinctive Collections to document the changing roles of women – students and faculty – at URI between 1950 and 1980. Her research will create a content module on women that will be used in the course “The URI Campus: A Walk Through Time”. Faculty Mentor: Senior Lecturer Catherine DeCesare, with assistance from Karen Morse, Director of Distinctive Collections.

Kevin Hart ’22, from Wakefield, Massachusetts, who studies political science and history with a minor in economics, researches right-wing terrorism in the USA and its motivation. “I wanted to research the subject because it is a little-explored case of political violence, but an important case with important implications,” he said. “Working with Assistant Professor Brendan Skip Mark gives me the guidance and experience I need to develop a worthwhile, science-based project.”

Sierra Obi ’21, from Danville, New Hampshire, who studies computer science and Spanish, is working on a project to investigate computer authentication difficulties faced by people with upper limb impairments – part of National Science Foundation-funded research conducted by Assistant Professor Krishna Venkatasubramanian. Obi works to understand the reasons and circumstances behind whom people with a disability share their personal computing devices and credentials to improve login security.

Alfred Timperley ’23, from East Greenwich, who studies computer science and data science, will be working on a project to develop a novel tool that will enable future research on program classification source code authorship, plagiarism detection, malware identification, and others. Faculty’s mentor: Assistant Professor Marco Alvarez.

Ethan Wyllie ’22, from North Kingstown, who studies Political Science and Spanish, researches racial inequality in welfare participation. He will track the participation rates of various groups – whites, blacks, Hispanics, and immigrants – at the state level over the past 20 years to determine racial disparities in US Social Security coverage. Faculty’s mentor: Associate Professor Ping Xu.