Alice Paul, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, Associate Director of the Master's Graduate Program in Biostatistics received the 2024 Data Science Institute Seed Grant on May 17th, 2024 for the data science project on "Building a Prescriptive Analytics Research Collaboration with the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority." Alice Paul (Biostats), Serdar Kadioglu (CS)

The project:
The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA). It is the primary transit service within Rhode Island. The planning, scheduling, and data analysis teams within RIPTA use past ridership data to drive future operational decisions. This project will use this data to help support RIPTA's mission of providing reliable and cost-effective service across the community. First, this project will estimate the impact of the Washington Bridge closure on ridership and service levels. Second, we will work with RIPTA to develop a data-driven way to maximize service under resource constraints. A key objective will also be to make this decision-making tool transparent and explainable to the public.