A holistic approach to data science integration
FAIR FORWARD 2025
A BIPOC Perspectives Initiative
11/01/25 & 11/02/2025
Supported by the Open Research Community Accelerator Program and funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
This hands-on experience will engage participants in analyzing open-source scientific and healthcare data to address real-world problems. Participants will learn how to apply the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) to ensure their research outputs contribute to transparent, reproducible science. We're prioritizing BIPOC students from HBCUs, HSIs, TCUs, and MSIs in our first recruitment wave, followed by working professionals from BIPOC backgrounds interested in mentorship and applying their skills for social good.
A huge thank you to all of our students, judges, and mentors for participating in the FAIR Forward initiative this year! We look forward to seeing you in our future events.
Want to be notified of our next event? Sign up here:
What went down at FAIR Forward 2025:
< An all-virtual learning space >
Participants
We prioritized BIPOC students and professionals from community colleges, HBCUs, HSIs, TCUs, and MSIs.
Focus
Hands-on analysis of real datasets to tackle meaningful community challenges
Prerequisites
None! Whether students studied biology, computer science, public health, statistics, or were just curious about data science - this hackathon met them where they are.
5 preparatory workshops:
Open source data
> Aug 29th
This workshop covered the basics of open source data, what data is and where it comes from, the FAIR and CARE principles, as well as the various career paths in data science.
1
An introduction to programming in R
Part 1: sep 8th <
Part 1 of the workshop covered an introduction to RStudio, an introduction to CDC's YRBS dataset, basic R commands, R packages, importing data, variable types, manipulating data, and writing data into files.
2
To access all of our workshop materials, please visit our GitHub repository.
Part 2: sep 10th <
Part 2 of the workshop covered the basics of tidyverse and applying tidyverse functions on the YRBS dataset.
Basics of version control
> Sep 24th
This workshop covered what Git is, why Git, an introduction to GitHub, the basic Git workflow and a walkthrough.
4
3
Basics of data visualization in R
Oct 10th <
This workshop covered an introduction to the ggplot2 package, variable types, plot types, data storytelling, and theme presets.
5
2-day virtual hackathon
> Nov 1st and 2nd
[2] Community Health Outcomes
[1] Water Quality and Health
[3] Student Performance
5
Open-source projects
~30
Participants
[4] COVID-19 deaths
[5] Food Security