Analytics at Wharton
Student Spotlight
Paying It Forward: How Wharton Data Science Academy Alumna Sydney Bramen Is Creating Impact Through Analytics
Sydney Bramen is heading to Georgetown University in the fall, but she’s making a quick stop at Wharton first to offer up some data science. The accomplished high school senior is one of the youngest featured speakers in the third annual Women in Data Science (WiDS) @ Penn Conference on Feb. 9 and 10, co-hosted by Analytics at Wharton, Penn Engineering, Wharton Customer Analytics, and The Wharton Department of Statistics and Data Science.
Her short video presentation is part of a WiDS @ Penn agenda filled with industry heavy hitters, including keynote speaker Michelle Peluso, W’93, who is executive vice president, chief customer officer, and co-president of retail at CVS Health, and renowned researcher Tal Rabin, who is a professor of computer and information science at Penn. The conference, which is open to people of all genders, aims to celebrate the diversity of content and personnel within the field of data science.
How did a 17-year-old squash player from The Baldwin School land among such illustrious company? A project she completed during her three-week stint with the Wharton Data Science Academy garnered the attention of organizers, who see her potential to become one of the next-gen leaders of the field. Her project, titled “Carbon, Cancer, and Contamination: The Relationships Between Pollution, Temperature, and Disease,” analyzes how changes in temperature and carbon emissions over time have affected lung cancer rates in the United States. Bramen and her co-authors tested eight variables and found all of them to have significant impact, either positively or negatively.
“As students, these are issues that are important to us,” she said. “We were, quite literally, trying to find correlation between these variables and cover a lot of bases.”
Sydney Bramen
High School
The Baldwin School
Year
Senior
Hometown
Bryn Mawr, PA
“…Take risks. Take those classes you might be afraid to take. Be fearless and not afraid to try something new, because that’s how you develop interests.”
Bramen’s interest in data science grew from a chance enrollment in a computer science class during the ninth grade. With no previous experience, she took the class on a whim and loved it. Like many speakers at WiDS @ Penn, she encourages other young women to step out of their comfort zones, too.
“As a student who goes to an all-girls’ school, that pushed me to explore new topics and boosted my confidence a lot. To those who may not have the same opportunities as me: take risks. Take those classes you might be afraid to take. Be fearless and not afraid to try something new, because that’s how you develop interests,” she said.
Bramen was recruited to Georgetown as an athlete and plans to major in business. She hopes to learn more about applying data science to real-world problems, including education inequality. Bramen tutors younger students through two Philadelphia volunteer organizations, SquashSmarts and OurVillage, so she’s seen the inequality firsthand. In fact, in her junior year, she learned the coding language Swift to create an app to help a struggling student learn fractions. Bramen says OurVillage now recommends the app for its math tutors.
“I hope to combine my interest in business and data science to possibly form a company in the future that uses 21st-century technology to help level the imbalance in education opportunities around the globe.”
The WiDS @ Penn committee sees those same inequities to educational access and is doing its part to level the scales. All conference registration fees will be donated to Wharton Global Youth’s Summer Programs to support need-based scholarships for female high school students. Last year, WiDS @ Penn raised $4,150 for the Wharton Data Science Academy scholarship fund, providing opportunities for young women like Bramen to pursue their dreams of changing the world through data science.
“I hope to combine my interest in business and data science to possibly form a company in the future that uses 21st-century technology to help level the imbalance in education opportunities around the globe.”
— Angie Basiouny
Watch Sydney’s Lightning Talk
Women in Data Science (WiDS) @ Penn is an independent virtual event to coincide with the annual Global WiDS Conference held at Stanford University and an estimated 150+ organizations worldwide. All genders are invited to attend WiDS regional events, which emphasize the diversity of data science, both in subject matter and personnel. A celebrated interdisciplinary event, WiDS @ Penn will welcome academic, student, and industry speakers from across the data science landscape. WiDS @ Penn is co-hosted by Analytics at Wharton, Penn Engineering, Wharton Customer Analytics, and The Wharton Department of Statistics and Data Science.