Internships
Campus Operations and Capital Programs has been a Data Science Internal Internship (DSII) partner since its inception and has employed 5 students over 8 semesters since the Spring of 2021. These students have helped plan, develop, test and implement several new tools that leverage space, building, and energy data to create visualizations, patterns, and trends that can help inform capital program decision making and operational activities.
Recent Interns
Tim Fan, an undergraduate in Computer Science, joined Campus Operations as an intern during the Summer of 2023 and worked for two semesters on improving the accuracy, functionality, and visualizations of our intern-developed building electrical data tool. Tim’s first semester was spent primarily on automating the file sharing, script running, and long-term hosting aspects of the tool, which involved setting up network connections and working with Brandeis ITS on configuring the site and the file transfer. Previously, the tool was hosted on the current intern’s own machine and then on a cloud-based site, needing manual upload and download of new data and resulting analysis. What we have now requires only one manual step and is safely within Brandeis’ IT security.
In the Fall of 2023, Tim was able to focus his time on the machine learning and predictive functions of the tool, adding complexities to the existing model with variables such as operating hours and building specific heating and cooling equipment. Throughout both semesters, Tim continued to update, tweak, and build upon the Tableau visualization file, which he has automatically pulling the newest database into colorized, curated dashboards that will ultimately be the most valuable deliverable from this effort. The dashboards will be where administrators and operators will go to understand patterns of energy uses, changes or deviations in them, and direct capital and operational decisions and projects informed by that.