Undergraduate Application Information
The DDDI Undergraduate Data Science and AI Thesis Award (DATA) Fellowship is entering its second year! The program provides financial support and professional development opportunities for College students pursuing ambitious, data driven research.
Program Overview:
- Awards of up to $500 to offset research expenses.
- Professional development opportunities to enhance fellows' data science and AI skills, network with peers, and gain experience in science communication.
- Targeting advanced undergraduate students in the College pursuing an original research project with a significant data science component, including projects that use modern AI methods in their analysis.
- Application requires a short project description, funding request breakdown, and faculty advisor information.
Applications for the 2026-2027 cycle are now open. If you have any questions about the fellowship or the application, please reach out to Terhi Nurminen, the Program Coordinator for the Data Science and Analytics Minor at sas-dasa@sas.upenn.edu. You can also schedule a meeting to discuss the Fellowship application or join our Zoom office hours on Monday, October 19 at 1-3pm or Wednesday, October 28 2:30-4:30pm.
You can access the DATA Fellowship application here. Applications are due on Friday October 30. We recommend that you review the information on this page, including eligibility criteria, carefully before applying. You can view all application questions here.
Fellowship Description
The DATA Fellowship supports undergraduate students in the College whose studies culminate in an original research project with a significant focus on data science, including the application of AI. In addition to receiving up to $500 in funding toward research expenses, fellows are expected to attend semesterly grant recipient gatherings and present their findings at the DDDI Undergraduate Research Colloquium at the end of the spring semester.
Eligibility Criteria
Please review the eligibility criteria below carefully. Some additional scenarios are described in the FAQ at the bottom of this page. If you have questions about your eligibility or think that your individual circumstances warrant an exception to one or more of these criteria, please reach out to sas-dasa@sas.upenn.edu before the application deadline.
You are an advanced undergraduate student in the College
Generally, this includes students graduating between spring 2027 and fall 2028, but we may consider exceptional candidates with later graduation dates. Dual degree students are eligible.
You are conducting an original research project, such as a thesis or a capstone project, that has a significant data science component
The Fellowship is aimed at supporting research projects where you have the main ownership over the project. While we encourage you to work closely with mentors, your contributions shouldn't mainly support a project that someone else conceived, planned, and is responsible for. The clearest example of original, undergraduate driven research are senior theses, but we recognize that many students conduct comparable or even more advanced work without writing a thesis. We particularly encourage juniors working on a project that they hope to build their thesis on to apply.
A significant data science component typically means applying advanced techniques on a large and/or complex data set. Generally, we expect the analysis to go beyond standard ANOVAs and regressions. For many successful applicants, this has meant using machine learning methods, creatively integrating both quantitative and qualitative data, and working with unstructured data (e.g. transcribed speech). We also recognize that the field of data science is being rapidly transformed by modern AI tools, and encourage students whose work incorporates AI to apply.
You require funding to complete your project and/or additional funding allows you to use approaches or tools that are more appropriate for your research question
The goal of the Fellowship is to enable undergraduate students to take on projects they would not otherwise be able to pursue. Typically, this means that the award enables you to extend your project, either by replacing free data/software with higher quality paid alternatives or by allowing you to add a completely new, resource-intensive component to your study. In the past, the Fellowship has supported hardware and software expenses (including LLM subscriptions), data access and translation fees, cloud computing credits, and participant incentives, as well as conference travel.
Generally, Fellowship funding should not replace existing funding, including lab funds that have been committed to the project. We encourage applicants to consult with their advisor on what additional tools or project extensions supplementary funding would enable.
Your faculty advisor for the project has a primary appointment in SAS
Fellows will be able to access their award funding through their faculty advisor. Due to fund restrictions, we are unfortunately unable to disburse funds outside of the School of Arts and Sciences. If you are co-advised by multiple people, it suffices that one of them has their primary appointment in SAS.
Fellowship Programming
In addition to providing funding, DDDI organizes programming to support the broader scholarly development of the selected fellows. These gatherings are planned and scheduled based on fellow interests, and attendance is expected. All fellows are also expected to present their research findings at the DDDI Undergraduate Research Colloquium at the end of the spring semester. More details about programming will be shared closer to event dates.
Currently, we are planning to host the following events:
Fall semester gathering (December)
Spring semester gathering (March)
DDDI Undergraduate Research Colloquium (May)
Disbursing of Funds
After application decisions are released and selected fellows have confirmed their participation in the program, we will reach out to the faculty advisors about accessing the funds. Please note that we cannot deposit funds to the recipient's bank account, but rather will reimburse your faculty advisor for qualifying expenses via Concur.
Application Instructions
This section provides an overview of the application components. In addition, we recommend that you review all application questions before you begin answering them to avoid repeating yourself. You should make the most of the space provided to you! We also recommend that you prepare your responses elsewhere and copy paste them into the application form. A document with the application questions is linked above.
After the application deadline, a review panel will conduct a blind review of all applications. Your application will be read by two reviewers from different fields and then discussed among all reviewers. Please note that while the reviewers work with data science questions in their own research, they are unlikely to be experts in your topic. You may find it useful to ask someone not working on the project to review your answers to ensure your answers are understandable to an educated non-specialist reader. You can also review our sample applications for reference.
Application Section Descriptions
This section asks for basic information about you, such as your name and major(s). Your name and contact information will be blinded, but your academic information is available to the reviewers.
This is the main component of the application, and contains 9 questions addressing different aspects of your project. The total word count will be approximately 800, depending on your responses. You should think about how these questions together tell a comprehensive story about your project and help the reviewers understand what you're doing, why you're doing it, and why it's important. Do not repeat yourself: if a piece of information would fit into two different questions, pick one. Similarly, if there is an important aspect of your project that doesn't neatly fit any section, you may still want to include it somewhere.
In this section, you will share how you would use the Fellowship grant. Your request should make sense in the context of your answers in the Project Proposal section. You will also need to provide a budget outlining all projects expenses and funding sources.
This section will ask you to provide contact details for your faculty advisor, as well as confirmation that they're advising you for this project. Note that we are not asking for a letter of recommendation: a screenshot of an email from them suffices.
This section collects information that will not be shared with the review committee but helps us understand who is applying for the fellowship.
Fellowship FAQ
If your question is not answered below, you're welcome to contact sas-dasa@sas.upenn.edu or come to Fellowship application office hours to discuss your situation.
No! All College students are eligible, without preference given to any particular program. However, students pursuing data science related coursework are often well prepared for conducting data centric research, and we do encourage you to consider whether the minor would support your academic and professional pursuits.
The Fellowship grant should not be used to replace existing funding. If you have already secured funding for all planned components, we recommend that you explore potential extensions to your project with your advisor. This will also give you an opportunity to use data sets and tools that would otherwise not be available to you. Please note that you are welcome to request less than the maximum amount of funding.
We believe that successful undergraduate research requires mentorship from an experienced researcher, and encourage you to contact faculty who share your interests. Generally, you will need a faculty advisor to both support you with the project and receive the Fellowship funding.
The rare exception to this are students working with a university staff member who conducts research without being faculty. These applicants should fill out the application and contact sas-dasa@sas.upenn.edu to discuss their situation.
Generally, undergraduate students are not expected to independently formulate their research question. Depending on the field, it may not be feasible for you to know what a good question to ask is, or what is reasonable with the time and resources available. It is also possible that a student joins a research project and works on it for multiple years, gaining more independence over time. The Fellowship is looking to support projects that are student-led, but we recognize that this may look different from one applicant to another. Generally, however, the successful applicants have at least had input into formulating the research question or direction, are taking an active role in determining which tools and methods to use, and are the main person responsible for finishing the project (or, a somewhat independent portion of a larger project). You should not simply be executing procedures your advisor asks you to carry out, or rely on them on the execution of all of the techniques you're using. You should be involved in most aspects of the project, rather than e.g. focusing on only data collection and cleaning or producing scripts to someone else's specifications. In short, you should be an important intellectual contributor whose ideas are reflected in the research trajectory.
The Fellowship is aimed for students who are conducting independent or semi-independent, faculty mentored research. Most of our past fellows pursued a thesis, but this is not a requirement. We recognize that undergraduate research takes many shapes, and standards vary between fields. If you think your project matches what we're looking for, we encourage you to apply. You're also welcome to contact sas-dasa@sas.upenn.edu or come to Fellowship application office hours to discuss your situation.
The Fellowship funds research projects, and all applicants must have a faculty advisor for their project. We recognize that research projects can look different in different fields, and some are more applied than others. However, a project that does not follow the scientific method is unlikely to receive funding. You're welcome to contact sas-dasa@sas.upenn.edu or come to Fellowship application office hours to discuss your situation.
If you are submatriculating or doing an accelerated master's, you are eligible for the grant if your research is conducted before you graduate with your Bachelor's degree. For the purposes of this application, please select your graduation term based on when you expect to complete all the requirements your undergraduate degree.
The grant may be used to support your Master's thesis work only if you finish the required thesis courses concurrently with your undergraduate degree requirements.