Coding for a cause

As the viral pandemic emptied campus and forced students and faculty to readjust their routines this spring, one research group at Perry World House (PWH) turned the challenging situation into a chance to give back and get lots of crucial work done at the same time.

The Borders and Boundaries Project researches how political life both affects and is affected by international borders and border-security policies. A key part of the work is creating a first-of-its-kind, global, satellite-generated database of major border crossings. After the pandemic hit, the project team took some time to transition their work online.

 “A lot of students had a gap in their ability to concentrate on their work, naturally, as they moved into new living situations and tried to get settled,” says Beth Simmons, the Andrea Mitchell University Professor in Law, Political Science, and Business Ethics who heads the project. “I realized that a lot of my students had lost on-campus jobs. Many of them had plans disrupted. They were looking not only to finish their classes but to find some kind of the project to take up.”

Read more in Penn Today >>