The Data-to-Knowledge (D2K) Lab at Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing plays an integral role in connecting Rice students with diverse industry, government, and community sponsors to complete real-world data science projects. At the 2025 D2K Spring Showcase held on April 23 at Duncan Hall, 14 student teams presented their interdisciplinary capstone projects.
The D2K Capstone teams are student led, and each semester they work on problems brought by D2K sponsor affiliates. D2K sponsors come from various sectors such as energy, aerospace, public transport, arts, and environment. Rice faculty and graduate student researchers (D2K Fellows) provide data science mentorship. These student-led teams demonstrate the transformative power of combining interdisciplinary multi-institutional collaborations with data science to improve public health and safety, enhance natural, cultural, and space environments, and solve global problems facing humanity.
This semester, Team Data Trainers won first place. Their project was titled, “Derailed - Evaluating the Effects of Train-Related Delays on Houston Fire Department Operations.”
Fire and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) response times in Houston are impacted by road blockages caused by cargo trains. The overall goal of this project was to improve public safety and health by combining fire department and train dispatch data to develop a unified, dynamic impact metric that scores each dispatch location’s vulnerability to blockages. The system is designed to be dynamic and flexible to incorporate new data and policy changes. Members of this team were Vincent Behnke, Emma Gruben, Slim Lim, Peter Stern, Sawyer Creamer, and Kyle Zhang. The team was sponsored by the Houston Fire Department and advised by sponsor mentor Leonard Chan, D2K Fellow Meredith Kruse, and Rice faculty mentor Xinje Lan.
“Partnering with the Rice D2K Lab helped the Houston Fire Department accomplish tasks it could not do on its own. By illustrating the impacts of cargo trains on our emergency response capabilities through rigorous analysis of real data, their approaches demonstrate the untapped potential of data analysis to enhance fire and emergency services,” said Chan from Houston Fire Department.
Second place was awarded to Team Paly Pals, whose project was titled, “AI-Powered Palynology: Automating Large-Scale Fossil Pollen Detection Efforts for Climate Change Research.”
With rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere contributing to increased risk of extreme global warming, accurate climate models are more critical than ever. Fossilized pollen records help validate these models by enabling reconstructions of past climates. However, these reconstructions rely on identifying thousands of pollen grains across numerous microscope slides – a process that is both time-consuming and labor-intensive. The goal of Paly Pals’ project was to automate this process by developing deep-learning models for pollen detection, accelerate data annotation, enable more scalable paleoclimate reconstructions and thus, generate more accurate climate models. The members of this team were Yuhan Wu, Andrew Ondara, Audrey Kim, Aaeisha Baharun, Isauro Sanchez, and Jonathan Lee. Sponsored by Smithsonian, the team was advised by sponsor mentors Scott Wing, Ingrid Romero, Alexander White, and Carlos Jaramillo from Smithsonian, Surangi Punyasena from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, D2K Fellow Krish Kabra, and Rice faculty mentor Arko Barman.
“We had a wonderful and productive time working with the Rice students. From the start, they organized our collaboration efficiently, kept meetings focused and were always prepared. As our project proceeded it became clear how bright, energetic, and knowledgeable they were. The students’ advisors were also excellent. The Rice D2K team’s work will really change how we do our research and how scientists around the world use our collections. Through this project we have seen the value of working with computational science students to bring 21st century methods to our fossil collections. We also had a lot of fun!” said Wing from the Smithsonian.
The third place award went to Team Flow and Order, whose project was titled, “Sewage Overflow Inequities Associated with Rainfall and Demographics.”
This project explored how factors such as rainfall and demographics including income and race contribute to the frequency of private sewer lateral overflows in Houston. By identifying high-risk areas and understanding the reasons behind sewer breaks, they aim to strengthen Bayou City Waterkeeper’s push for equitable investments under the consent decree for disproportionately burdened neighborhoods and plan to utilize Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) to reveal how these relationships change across different parts of the city. The members of this team were Saatchi Sagoo-Jones, Izzy Goodman, Jiahui Wei, Anika Bjerkens, Katherine Britt, and Alex Kornblum. The team was sponsored by Bayou City Waterkeeper and advised by sponsor mentor Guadalupe Fernandez, D2K Fellow Tyler Bagwell, and Rice faculty mentor Xinjie Lan.
“Working with Rice D2K has produced an analysis that our organization could not achieve on its own or by working with other partners. The analysis is sophisticated and offers a meaningful improvement to our understanding of sewage overflows in Houston. We plan to use this analysis in our ongoing policy work to tackle this problem,” said Fernandez from Bayou City Waterkeeper.
“These and other glowing testimonials from our students, university stakeholders, and other sponsor mentors as well as their continued participation demonstrate the profound impact D2K has on their education, growth, and success,” director of D2K, Prof. Chad Shaw said. “I am extremely proud of the Rice D2K team and all that we have accomplished this year.”
All projects from the 2025 Spring Showcase can be found here.