Eligibility
Doctoral students who meet the following requirements are eligible to be CRELS trainees:
- Enrolled in full-time, on-campus PhD programs in the Social Sciences Division, the Division of Computing, Data Science and Society, or in the professional schools at UC Berkeley.
- Have completed the first-year course requirements in their home departments; Trainees will be selected for the program each year during the spring semester, typically the spring of their first year of graduate studies.
Funding
Trainee Fellows will be funded for one year, typically in their third year of graduate school, but exceptionally prepared students may receive funding in their second year and students in later years will also be considered. Funding includes a 12-month stipend and in-state tuition and fees. The CRELS stipend is $34,000. Trainees’ home departments are responsible for the difference between the CRELS stipend and GSR salary minimums. Funding in non-funded years typically comes from faculty research grants, internal or external fellowships, or teaching assistantships. Only US Citizens and legal permanent residents are eligible for stipends, tuitions, and fees, due to NSF regulations.
Trainee Scholars are not eligible for stipends or tuition/fees but receive travel or research funding. Trainee Scholars need not be US Citizens or Legal Permanent Residents.
Application Requirements
[The application period ended April 29, 2024.]
CRELS particularly welcomes applications from students whose identities are underrepresented in STEM and data science. We seek to cultivate multiple multidisciplinary, racially, dis(abled), and gender-diverse cohorts of future leaders in the AI//Science Technology and Society//Social Justice space.
Questions about CRELS? Please contact CRELS' executive Director, Dr. Harpreet Mangat: bids-crels@berkeley.edu(link sends e-mail).
Program Goals
CRELS emphasizes a team science approach to problem solving and prepares students to generate new scientific knowledge and develop novel tools for large-scale data integration and analysis.
Trainees can expect to acquire the following core competencies:
Note: The program will consider accepting other coursework in substitution for these courses, including coursework at other institutions.
Program Design
Key components of CRELS include:
- A flexible set of pathways for trainees to acquire essential competencies;
- Two available “tracks” through the program for trainees with either more or less background in mathematics and computation;
- Courses in data science, computing, applied statistics, Inequality and Criminal Legal Systems, Social Implications of AI and Big Data, and on Reproducibility and Collaborative Computational Research;
- Participation in a multi-disciplinary CRELS workshop that will meet weekly and will include discussion of work in progress, recently published research, and professional development.
- Professional development in team science, research ethics, science communication, and publishing.
- Mentoring from faculty from multiple disciplines.
The program accommodates the requirements of trainees’ home PhD programs while providing sufficient flexibility to explore specific interests through an individualized training plan. This built-in flexibility and careful sequencing of required elements ensures that trainees’ time to degree is not delayed.
Major Research Efforts and Projects
Trainees will typically begin the program in the summer following their first year in graduate school with workshops and bootcamps to prepare them for fall coursework and to remediate any lack of experience with coding or statistics. Students who may need extra preparation and support for success in CRELS will be counseled by the faculty on necessary BIDS or D-Lab trainings. A week prior to fall instruction, trainees will attend a program orientation that covers program requirements and structure, advice on connecting with faculty mentors, training requirements, review of individual development plans, and an introduction to key program leadership and faculty. The program orientation and subsequent group meetings will serve to form close bonds within and across cohorts. Initially, each trainee will be matched with one mentor from their own discipline and another from a different discipline, based on their research interests and developmental goals, although they will be allowed to change mentors as the program progresses.
Program coursework will occur primarily in the second year of graduate school, with some courses possibly completed in the third year, depending on requirements of the home department. We also anticipate that some trainees will begin taking program courses in their first year of graduate school, in anticipation of application to the program. Given the wide range of backgrounds and prior experiences, each trainee's coursework will need some degree of tailoring in consultation with program faculty. The coursework will play a critical role in developing core competencies that will prepare trainees for effective engagement during their 3rd year in at least one of the research projects described below.
Most trainees will take advantage of program funding in their third year. The CRELS workshops and most professional development activities will be available to all interested doctoral students on campus. Professional Development, mentoring, and other support services provided by ISSI will continue as students transition to dissertation research in their fourth and fifth years. A central goal of the fourth year in CRELS will be ensuring all trainees submit at least one paper for publication by the end of the year.
This diagram further illustrates the program design for the typical trainee:
