PiTech PhD Impact Fellowship - by the Numbers
by Malgorzata Rejniak
As we finalize the 2024 summer cohort of Siegel PiTech PhD Impact Fellows, we’d like to look back and reflect on the Fellowship since its pilot in 2021 and share some key facts and stats on how we’ve evolved.
The Siegel PiTech PhD Impact Fellowship supports Cornell University PhD students in technical fields through 12-week summer externships with nonprofit and public sector organizations. Students work on real-world projects and gain exposure to the technology challenges facing nonprofits and government. Participating organizations benefit from students’ technical skills to advance their missions.
The Fellowship underpins the PiTech Initiative’s focus on partnerships through our vibrant network of government and nonprofit organizations working across different issue areas.
Insight #1: Responding to growing demand from students, we’ve scaled the program to its current capacity
In response to growing demand for the Fellowship from students over time (from 15 applicants for Summer 2022, to 54 for Summer 2024), we have scaled the number of students we are able to match and support (from three students in 2021, to 10-12 this year). We are exploring opportunities to scale the program to meet student demand.
Table 1: Program evolution
Insight #2: We have supported a diverse mix of organizations across different sectors and issue areas
We have curated a strong community of host organizations among government agencies and nonprofits, spanning diverse domains like disability & accessibility, social justice, healthcare, data rights, and sustainability. Every year, we cast a wide net and try to engage new organizations and also foster ongoing partnerships with existing ones. We have had many repeat organizations matched with students over the summers, including Blue Ridge Labs, Consumer Reports Digital Lab, NYC Health + Hospitals, NY Public Library (NYPL), and Young Adult Institute (YAI), and have thus far placed Fellows with 24 unique organizations, among them 9 public sector agencies and 15 nonprofits.
Partner organizations, which may otherwise have limited resources to engage in exploratory technical projects, welcome the opportunity to participate in the Fellowship. Access to students’ technical skills, including machine learning, data science, LLMs, human-centered design, and AR/VR, allows host organizations to investigate how emerging technologies may be used to advance their mission.
Image 1: 24 Matched Organizations
Insight #3: We have adapted our projects over time to align with the skills and interests of students across IS, CS, ECE, and ORIE
The PiTech PhD Impact Fellowship is open to students pursuing doctorates in computer science (CS), information science (IS), and operations research and information engineering (ORIE), and electrical and computer engineering (ECE). While initially, most of our Fellows were from Information Science, over time, we have targeted project sourcing and scoping to match the skills and interests of students from CS and ORIE, resulting in more balanced cohorts across the technical disciplines.
Graphic 1: PhD Programs
Insight #4: We are discerning in the projects we scope and propose to students and in how we conduct student-org matches
Not all partner organizations are best-served by PhD students’ technical skills or have projects that fit the 12-week summer fellowship timeline. For this reason, we engage in conversations with the organizations early on to understand their context and provide guidance and feedback on project scoping. As we have become increasingly discerning about which projects are a good fit for the Fellowship, we’ve focused on a smaller number of high-impact projects for students to consider.
We also spend considerable time curating student-org matches to align students’ interests and skills and organizations’ specific technical needs. This involves arranging group informational calls between organizations and students; 1:1 conversations to ensure a proposed match was a good fit; and detailed project scoping calls to define project goals, timelines, and deliverables. A summary of our outreach funnel and curation work is visualized below.
Table 2: Scoped Projects
Image 2: Project Funnel
Insight #5: There’s strong interest in continuing Fellows’ work past the summer
In 2023, five of the twelve Fellows remained involved with their organizations beyond the summer, including as full-time volunteers, through academic research collaborations, or as advisors.
Breanna Green joined Block Party as a full-time volunteer.
Mahika Phutane and Serena Guo continued work on their accessible chatbot and AR/VR solutions with MOPD and YAI, respectively, with support from PiTech.
Fengyand Lin became a consultant for the Consumer Reports Innovation Lab.
Zhi Liu involved his PhD dissertation advisor in his fellowship work, resulting in a joint academic paper and ongoing policy change/intervention exploration with NYPL.
We are exploring new models for supporting these innovation opportunities, for example through funding PhD Impact Fellows and host organizations to further incubate the most promising projects.
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Looking ahead
We’d love to see the Siegel PiTech PhD Impact Fellowship support more placements among Cornell University students. At the same time, we hope other academic institutions might adapt the model to their campuses.
The PiTech Initiative is immensely grateful to our funder, the Siegel Family Endowment, for the generous support that makes the PhD Impact Fellowship possible, and would also like to acknowledge the contributions of the larger PIT-UN community.