A lot of Luddy Indianapolis students work on Polis Center projects—well over 100 grads and undergrads—which gives them the opportunity to use the skills they are learning in a “real-world” practical application under supervision. Some of the work is for courses and some is for paid positions. A few have told their former supervisor that listing their efforts for Polis projects on job applications after graduation contributed significantly in being hired.
“I can say my experience with The Polis Center gave me the confidence and hands on experience on informatics-related projects, to understand the data handling in better perspective,” Chinmayi Sailaja Nimmaraju said.
Before she graduated with her degree in Health Informatics in 2022, Nimmaraju worked for The Polis Center on the State of Aging in Central Indiana Report project as part of a class team. She then worked as a Community Health Informatics RA and Health Informatics RA under Karen Frederickson Comer, associate director at Polis, on two consecutive practicums, the first one a COVID research analysis entitled Predictive Analysis of Socio-economic and Socio-vulnerable Factors in COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Central Indiana. The second was a literature search for all peer-reviewed articles that she could find that mention SAVI Community Information System. Nimmaraju is now clinical data coordinator at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.
Comer said, “Chinmayi first became engaged with Polis via a class project to write about health trends in the older adult population. Using vaccination data collected for her class project, she then proposed an individual practicum to use SAVI community-level data to explore social determinants of vaccine hesitancy. She rounded out her experience at Polis by completing a scoping literature review to help describe SAVI contributions to biomedical research. I am delighted that Chinmayi used her Luddy training and work experience to secure an excellent bioinformatics job upon graduation!”
Vijay Mittal is assistant vice president at Barclays (NJ). He earned his masters degree in Applied Data Science.
Jay Colbert, data manager at Polis, who supervised Mittal, said, “Vijay was always an important part of our data processing team with his experience and professionalism. Even though he was a student intern with us he basically operated as a full-time staff employee. His contributions were such that I nominated him for IUPUI’s Student Employee of the year Award and also for IUPUI’s Elite 50.”
From May 2021 to May 2022, Mittal worked on multiple tasks within multiple projects, including the SAVI community information system, The State of Aging in Central Indiana report, and the Domestic Violence Network report. His tasks involved data manipulation and programming using software such as SQL Server, SSIS, Microsoft Office, mSQL, ArcGIS, and other data-related applications.
Projects with a community focus
The Polis Center website describes their various internships: “The Polis Center is pleased to offer student positions that provide students an opportunity to put the informatics skills they are learning into practice via community-focused projects. Desired skill sets include programming R, Python, MS SQL, data analysis, GIS, social media, visualizations, graphic design, and others, as individual projects require. Positions range from in-person, hybrid, or remote, and depend on the assigned project(s).”
Students are involved in work from the Polis Center’s three emphasis areas of Community Informatics, Community Health Informatics, and Geoinformatics, including:
- SAVI Community Information System
- How is Indianapolis Doing project (post-pandemic in various sectors like economics, education, housing, health, etc.)
- State of Aging in Central Indiana Report
- Digital Encyclopedia of Indianapolis
- Fox Cities United Ways Regional Information System
- Marion County Social Determinants of Health GIS StoryMap
- FEMA Cooperating Technical Partners (CTP) program mitigation planning projects
- Indiana Multihazard Mitigation Plans (MHMP)
- GIS for Disease Mapping
- COMET Lab projects
- Project Management
Other projects they are working on:
- Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Disparities Data (CMS)
- National Incident-Based Reporting System Crime Data (NIBS)
- Indiana Pre Disaster Mitigation (PDM)
- Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)
- GIS Legacy
- Legacy Data
- Legacy Indiana Finance-Indiana Department of Local Government Finance Parcel-based Property Data
- CSS Projects
- CDC Social Vulnerability Index Data
- U.S. Census Public Use Microdata Samples Data
- ESRI ArcGIS Knowledge and ArcGIS Notebooks
About Polis Center at IUPUI
The Polis Center is a research center in the IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at IUPUI. The Center values “place,” using its technical and analytical expertise to help communities and organizations understand trends, inequities, and disparities in important issues and improve community development and quality-of-life efforts; natural disaster resiliency and responsiveness to climate change; and community health issues and their social and environmental determinants.
Media Contact
Joanne Lovrinic
jebehele@iu.edu
317-278-9208