DS Team Engagement
Pieces of the Puzzle: Deep Learning for Classifying Moche Themes from Fragments
Sep. 16, 2021—The Moche or Mochica culture of the North Coast of Peru (250-900CE) are celebrated as having developed one of the richest artistic traditions in the Andean region of South America. The Moche are famed for their depictions of every imaginable facet of daily life in ceramic artifacts known as “Stirrup Vessels”, bottle-like objects that were...
Building Family Trees: Identifying Enslaved People in Ecclesiastical Records
Aug. 25, 2021—The Slave Societies Digital Archive (SSDA) preserves the oldest serial records for slave societies in the Americas. The records contain handwritten text in collections of books by ecclesiastical (religious) and notaries (other government officials) for the purposes of recording births, marriages, and deaths. The text are written in ecclesiastical Spanish and Portuguese. Through efforts of...
Escaping Despair: Understanding the Decline in US Life Expectancy
Aug. 25, 2021—The rise in midlife mortality in the United States has been attributed to causes of death including suicide, poisoning/overdose, and alcohol-related liver disease. These cluster of causes, regarded as the deaths of despair, are postulated to reflect an underlying feeling of hopelessness and resulting self-destructive behaviors. However, there is limited research testing whether individual feelings...
Wearables for Teachers: Enabling Real-Time Instructional Feedback
Aug. 25, 2021—What can I do to provide the best instructional environment for my students? What actions can I take to more effectively manage my classroom and encourage constructive behavior in my students? Vanderbilt alum and Founder and CEO of The Behavior Company Dr. Alyssa Van Camp seeks to provide support to teachers through a wearable which...
Laying Down the Law with Class Action Lawsuits
Aug. 16, 2021—How do judges choose a fair amount for attorney’s compensation in class action lawsuits? Is the decision consistent across similar court cases? Are there quantifiable defining characteristics that form the basis for differentiation in attorneys’ fees awards? Attorney and Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise Law Professor Brian Fitzpatrick seeks to answer these questions....
Unearthing New Discoveries: Mapping Nacimiento through Soil Samples with Machine Learning
Aug. 11, 2021—What was life like for ordinary citizens in ancient civilizations? What were their activities in their daily lives – walking the same ground that we walk today? Archaeologist and Associate Professor of Anthropology Dr. Markus Eberl seeks to answer these questions for the the small Mayan site of Nacimiento in the Petexbatun region of Guatemala...
Illuminating the Unseen: Insights into the African-American experience at Vanderbilt
Jul. 12, 2021—Who are the people who have made Vanderbilt great and made it into the hallmark of excellence and inclusivity that it is today? In 2007, inspired by notable African-American Vanderbilt alum whose contributions and accomplishments were relatively unknown to current Vanderbilt students, Dr. Rosevelt Noble began the Lost in the Ivy project. He sought to...
Video: Inside the DSI | Slave Societies Digital Archives
Jun. 28, 2021—