📅 August 25 – 27, 2026
⏰ 10 am – 3 pm
📍Bobst Library

Foundations of Research Computing (FORC) Camp is right around the corner! Join us for three days of FREE practical, interdisciplinary training for graduate researchers at every skill level. There are five tracks of hands-on workshops to choose from, including non-coding options. We’ll cover topics like data storytelling, Generative AI, Python, R, and applied AI workflows.

Space is limited! Learn more about the program and register today on the FORC Camp website.

Image credit: NYU Data Services.

Did you know that Data Services offers course-embedded data-related instruction for all NYU faculty and instructors? 

We can help get your undergraduate and graduate students up to speed on the skills they need to succeed. We’ll work with you to plan co-curricular instruction in your classroom or in ours to support course objectives and projects. Reach out to data.services@nyu.edu to get started!

Image credit: Disclosure Avoidance Explorer.

When working with and publishing population data, researchers have several options for protecting individual privacy. One option, “coarsening,” is an umbrella term for techniques that reduce the precision of data such as rounding values, aggregating small geographic areas into larger ones, and reporting ranges instead of exact counts. Recently, this term has attracted extra attention after the U.S. Department of Commerce issued an administrative order directing researchers to use coarsening — rather than other disclosure avoidance techniques — when working with Census and Bureau of Economic Analysis data. 

Dr. Mark Mather, Associate Vice President of Programs at the Population Reference Bureau, explains the backlash to this administrative order in a new blog post. He also shares the Disclosure Avoidance Explorer, an easy-to-use tool to help understand how this order could impact population data and research.

UltraViolet is part of a suite of repositories at NYU that provide a home for research materials. Data Services helps NYU researchers prepare their materials for deposit in UltraViolet to facilitate open access and long-term preservation.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

This month’s featured deposit is on the topic of climate change and comes from Courant researchers Mainak Mondal (postdoctoral researcher) and Professor David Holland. They recently published Effects of Ambient Current on Melting at the Grounding Line of a Glacier, which consists of MATLAB scripts that use the MIT General Circulation Model (MITgcm) to analyze the effects of ambient ocean currents and tides on the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. Their research shows the importance of considering a balance of ocean dynamics in predicting future glacier melting. In conducting their analysis, the team also made use of NYU’s High Performance Computing resources.

Elsevier Developer Portal provides API access to text data in ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Engineering Village, some of Elsevier’s largest databases. APIs (Application Programming Interface) are tools that allow for computer-to-computer interaction. Typically, API access requires technical skills including basic-to-intermediate fluency with Python, JSON, and XML. With Elsevier Research Products APIs, you can access data via typical API or via interactive API tools which show you the code used to make the Python call. Please note that these APIs have weekly quotas. For details on what type of data is available, how to request an API key, and the API documentation, please visit our Text Data Mining Research Guide. 

Image credit: Climate.us image, based on NOAA OISST data. 

In 2025, the US federal government moved to dismantle climate.gov, which had been a trusted source of climate data for over a decade. The scientists and communicators who worked on the website scrambled to preserve their data under a new domain and built climate.us, which now functions as both an archive of past climate reports and an independent platform for current information. 

Through climate.us, researchers and the public can access vital climate data and information collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), stretching back decades. Like the Data Rescue Project we featured in the March newsletter, this is a great example of data workers collaborating in a crisis to preserve access to lifesaving information. And with the rolling heat waves and wildfire smoke we’ve been experiencing this summer, it couldn’t be more timely. 🌡️

Image credit: NYU School of Global Public Health.

Q. What's your name, program, and year?
A. My name is Rophence Ojiambo, and I'm an incoming third-year PhD student in Biostatistics at the School of Global Public Health.

Q. What's your service area at Data Services and how long have you worked here?
A. I'm a Quantitative Specialist, providing support in R and Stata. I started working at Data Services in May 2026.

Q. What do you like most about working at Data Services?
A. I find joy in helping people feel confident working with quantitative data. I enjoy teaching and simplifying statistical concepts into clear, practical steps and watching people being comfortable using tools like RStudio, Quarto and GitHub for creating reproducible workflows for their own projects.

Q. Describe your favorite data-related project that you've worked on.
A. A data-related project that has really shaped how I think about research has been a study that uses Add Health data to examine how different ways of measuring adolescent depressive symptoms can affect research findings. I think of it as a “one data set, many analysts” problem. The project compares findings when depression is measured using a full symptom scale, a shorter screener, or a single survey item. I like this project because it shows that data analysis is not only about choosing an appropriate statistical model, but thinking carefully about how key constructs are measured. Small measurement decisions can change the conclusions we draw, especially in public health and social science research.

Q. What's your favorite place to get a meal or a snack near Bobst Library?
A. Chow House, it's about 10 minutes from Bobst, a Chinese restaurant with great ambience, perfect for grabbing lunch or dinner with a friend!

Thanks for reading! We hope you have a great summer and to see you soon either on the 5th floor at Bobst or online.

- Your friends at Data Services