Owen-Smith works to enhance impact analysis of academic scholarships

August 13, 2020

Ford School professor Jason Owen-Smith is working with technology partners to create "a privacy-preserving collaboration platform enabling academic institutions and public agencies to evaluate the effects of grant-making, scholarships and other financial support on students' performance, future occupations and contributions to academic research," according to Duality Technologies, one of the partners.

The partnership involves Dulaity, a leading provider of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) enabling collaboration between organizations on sensitive data, and NumFOCUS, a non-profit organization which sponsors the use of open-source software in research, data science and scientific computing. 

Owen-Smith, who, among many roles at the University, is director of the Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS), will partner with Duality to develop a privacy-preserving data science framework.

"The privacy-preserving framework being developed by Duality will include interfaces and tools that integrate seamlessly with our current research environments," said Owen-Smith. "It will enable our teams to utilize proven methods while facilitating access to sensitive data, which will translate into greater efficiency and deeper insights, all while preserving individual privacy. This project fits perfectly into our mission to understand, explain and improve the public value of research and higher education."

This news was provided by Duality Technologies. Read the press release here