Biodiversity literature is dedicated to the identification, documentation, and categorization of plants, fungi, animals, and other living organisms. Correctly extracting the name of an organism within these documents involves finding the entire scientific name–including the genus, specific epithet, and author name (a plant name shown below). Extracting these names allows biologists to access documents about a species more comprehensively, and to track an organism’s history of documentation by botanists, which includes biological changes and changes in how scientists describe them. However, correctly finding organisms by their scientific names is made difficult by ambiguous abbreviations, changing botanical and zoological codes and conventions, and poor data quality.

The US federal government sees childcare as affordable if it does not exceed 7 percent of income. It may be no surprise that licensed 0-3 home-based and center-based childcare is unaffordable for most New York City households. Moreover, unmet childcare needs come at a cost to businesses. Before COVID-19, employers lost $12.7 billion a year due to employee childcare challenges. COVID-19 related school and daycare closures exacerbated these losses, as millions of women left the workforce.

How does a 90-year old government agency with 12,000 employees embrace technology on all fronts: hardware, software, and the processes that come with managing both? Part of the struggle lies in IT support — an often overlooked yet crucial part of every business. At the NYC Housing Authority (NYCHA), IT support employees already process 9.2k tickets per month. Yet with increased need for digital devices and business software, IT issues are bound to increase.

Without an intuitive and useful workflow for resolving IT issues, employees may feel frustrated, stuck, and unable to complete their tasks. They are less able to serve the 300,000+ tenants who live in NYCHA’s public housing developments in NYC. What tickets were NYCHA employees even submitting to resolve their IT issues?

For many years, the online consumer data ecosystem was a digital wild west: Consumers had almost no way to protect their online data, especially once it was already collected by companies.

Fortunately, recent consumer privacy regulations have since created safeguards for consumers’ online data. Laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have empowered users with new online data rights. Under CCPA, for instance, California residents can send requests to companies asking to access, delete, or opt-out of the sale of their personal data.

As the Public Interest Technology Initiative at Cornell Tech enters its third academic year, it continues to bring a public interest lens to graduate studies at Cornell Tech.

PiTech Initiative programs are specialized to the needs of individuals across all stages of the academic career trajectory, from master’s students and PhDs, to Postdocs and Faculty. Our goal is to create meaningful ways for each of those groups to apply technology to serve public needs and engage with social impact organizations throughout their time at Cornell Tech.

Briana Vecchione embedded with Blue Ridge Labs @ Robin Hood this past summer as one of our inaugural PiTech Impact Fellows. She worked with the early-stage social ventures selected for Blue Ridge Labs’ 2021 Catalyst accelerator program, which were Touchdown NYC, Communifi, UnlockEd, and Karen’s Club.