California Election 2020 Data Challenge
Get Help (Mentors & Slack)
Domain Mentor Q&A Session
On September 16 and 18 from 3-5pm faculty, community, and subject matter experts graciously volunteered their time to provide virtual consultations to support registered teams as they develop their projects. To participate, participants must register for the Q&A session no later than 10am the day of the session to receive the Zoom link.
We strongly encourage participants to attend these sessions. Mentors will offer registered teams general advice on approaching a project on the ballot initiative they have chosen. Mentors can offer participants insight into the ballot initiative content, history of the issue related to the ballot initiative in California or, more broadly, suggest sources of publicly available data and help define a research question.
Nick Anderson, Ph.D. (September 18)
Mentor for Health Propositions (Prop 14 and 23)
Associate Professor and Division Chief, Health Informatics
Cardiff Professor of Informatics
University of California, Davis
Shikha Kothari, MBBS (September 16 and 18)
Mentor for Health Propositions (Prop 14 and 23)
Physician/ M.S. Health Informatics Candidate
UC Davis Health Informatics Graduate Group
Darien Shanske (September 16)
Mentor for Proposition 15 – Taxes
Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Davis School of Law
Dr. Kim L. Nalder (September 18)
Mentor for Proposition 15 – Taxes
Professor of Political Science,
Director of the Project for an Informed Electorate,
Executive Director of CalSpeaks Opinion Poll
Zachary Bleemer (September 16)
Mentor for Proposition 16 – Affirmative Action
PhD Candidate in Economics
UC Berkeley
Drew Halfmann (September 18)
Mentor for Proposition 18 – Suffrage for 17-year-olds
Associate Professor of Sociology
UC Davis
Leadership Team for Sacramento Chapter of
the Scholars Strategy Network
Oliver Ehlinger (September 16 – 3pm to 5pm)
Mentor for Proposition 21 – Rent Control
Managing Attorney
Legal Services of Northern California
Mollie D’Agostino (September 16 and 18)
Mentor for Proposition 22 – App-based Drivers
Policy Director, 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program
Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis
Policy Institute for Energy, the Environment, and the Economy
Daniel Sperling (September 16 and 18)
Mentor for Proposition 22 – App-based Drivers
Founding Director, Institute of Transportation Studies
Blue Planet Prize Professor of Engineering and Environmental Science & Policy
University of California, Davis
Board member, California Air Resources Board
Minming Wu Morri (September 18)
Mentor for Proposition 24 – Consumer Privacy
Associate Campus Counsel
UC Davis Office of Campus Counsel
Campus Privacy Officer
UC Davis Office of Compliance and Policy
Michael Everett (September 16 and 18)
Mentor for Proposition 25 – Criminal Justice
Data Science Fellow,
COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project
UCLA School of Law
Ethan Evans (September 18)
Mentor for Social Science Research Questions and Data
Research Affiliate, UC Davis, Center for Healthcare Policy and Research
Assistant Professor, CSUS Division of Social Work
The UC Davis Researcher Services, Health Sciences Librarians, and Computational Research Services staff are also available for support with locating data sources and framing research questions:
Bruce Abbott (September 16)
Mentor for Health Research, Blaisdell Medical Library
John Daniels (September 16 and 18)
Mentor for Social Sciences research and data, Computational Research Service
David Michalski (September 16 and 18)
Mentor for Social Sciences, geographic, and demographic data, Shields Library
Christy Navarro (September 16 and 18)
Mentor for Health Data, Blaisdell Medical Library
Megan G. Van Noord (September 16)
Mentor for Health and Social Sciences data, Carlson Health Sciences Library
Technical Mentor Office Hours
DataLab’s data science team hosts weekly drop-in office hours on Mondays from 1:30-3:00pm. They can provide support with developing research questions and approaches, troubleshooting your code, and finding learning resources.
DataLab’s technical experts at these drop-in sessions include:
- Wesley Brooks, Research Data Science
- Naomi Kalman, Data Specialist
- Oliver Kryelos, VR Data Programmer
- Arthur Koehl, Data Scientist
- Justin Merz, Research Support Engineer for Shields Library
- Pamela Reynolds, DataLab Associate Director
- Tyler Shoemaker, Postdoctoral Scholar for Web App Development
- Michele Tobias, Geospatial Data Specialist
Final Check-in with Challenge Organizers
The final open office hours session is on Wednesday, September 30th from 3-5pm. The Challenge organizers will go over guidelines for project submissions to the virtual showcase and answer questions. Materials and Zoom link will be distributed through the Challenge’s Slack workspace.
Challenge Slack Workspace
All registered individuals and teams are invited to join the Challenge’s Slack workspace. Check out channels #getting_started, #resources, #team_formation and #help_me to ask for and share helpful tips.