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Morgan Stanley Machine Learning for Good Hackathon
On Thursday, December 9th, the Child Mind Institute participated in the judging of the Morgan Stanley Machine Learning for Good Hackathon. But we weren’t just judges — the hackathon challenge was to automate analysis of data from Child Mind Institute CRISIS study on the mental health impacts of the pandemic, and the winning approaches will be used to develop a software platform that our scientists can use into the future.
The Child Mind Institute judges were Michael P. Milham, MD, PhD, Phyllis Green and Randolph Cōwen Scholar and Vice President of Research; and Aki Nikolaidis, PhD, Research Scientist in the Center for the Developing Brain. The winning team of volunteer technologists from Morgan Stanley, named the “Innovative Linguists,” set out to analyze behavioral patterns in the survey responses that have “untapped potential for addressing psychological concerns and eventually using them to lay out a technical roadmap for devising intelligent tools for proactive assistance.”
You can read more about the hackathon and the judging here.
“I was very impressed with the submissions and what the talented teams at Morgan Stanley managed to accomplish in such a short time with our data,” says Dr. Nikolaidis. “I think that the results from the hackathon are very promising, and I’m excited to see how we can use these tools to gain insight into how the pandemic is affecting children and families.”
The hackathon is just one way that the Child Mind Institute are collaborating. We’re proud to be a member of the Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children’s Mental Health, which is bringing parents, teachers, and kids together with resources for promoting mental wellness during the pandemic. The CRISIS Survey, which data fueled the Machine Learning for Good hackathon, was made possible by Morgan Stanley, as is the Child Mind Institute’s new Family Resource Center.
The hackathon is a particularly special collaboration because it exemplifies the open source/open science philosophy that the Child Mind Institute has pioneered in brain imaging and children’s mental health research. Much of our energy is devoted to developing tools and databases so that researchers around in the world can help accelerate the pace of discovery. In this case, the Child Mind Institute is the one benefiting from the tools and expertise of a partner!
