The 2018 StatStart Program hosted 10 underrepresented minority high school students from Malden High School, Boston Latin Academy and the Neighborhood House Charter High School.
The program was a tremendous group effort this year, led by Faculty Advisor Marcello Pagano, Program Coordinator Megan Scott and doctoral students Alex Ocampo, Sam Tracy, Leah Comment, Harrison Reeder, Jonathan Larson, Michele Zemplenyi, Rolando Acosta, Irina Degtiar, Tom Madsen, Ryan Sun, and Will Townes. Eleanor Scimone, a 2015 StatStart alumna from the program’s first cohort, came back to help as a Teaching Assistant.
The high school students took intensive computing and biostatistics classes, and attended joint seminars with the college Pipelines Summer Program. Professors Marcello Pagano and Tamarra James-Todd both gave inspiring joint lectures.
The program wrapped up with a culminating symposium, giving students an opportunity to present their research to friends, family, faculty and students. The research groups presented on three projects: “Effects of Medicaid Expansion of the Rates of Mammography,” “Depression and its Treatments (which analyzed the effectiveness of various treatments for depression),” and “How Social Media Affects the Psychology of Teenagers.”
