PI: Melissa DellTA for ECON 2355: Unleashing Novel Data at Scale

AIMS - Alternative Investment and Manager Selection

Engineered features and blocking strategies to algorithmically link historical records between large datasets, including national censuses and Social Security records. Developed, lead, and executed an in-depth study on relations between historical economic conditions and divorce rates in Utah and Nevada. o Created API and Webscraping tools to add over 10,000,000 records to and retrieve data from online databases. o Used recovered census data to create measures of family stability on county and state levels. Analyzed economic data to remove exogenous variation from the model. Designed and optimized algorithms to identify and classify tasks to improve user experience on FamilySearch.org.

Develop and debug computational modeling software in JavaWork with a team of engineers to create in-depth patches and extensive unit tests for legacy software projects with national security impacts Add features to optimization algorithm to expand parameters, weighting options, and results visualization.

Created an automated JavaScript testing process for programs in development:o Wrote an interface to allow scripts to remotely control the main program’s GUI. o Created a series of unit tests to verify functionality of each program element after a new commit. Completed language localization process for an internationally distributed software suite.