When I was applying for the summer research internship program from Mitacs, on 2014, I decided to spend some time scraping the (public) data about the research projects available (mainly the titles) and from that I could generate a word cloud with the most frequent keywords. I wrote two blog posts about the process: the first one on how I got the data, and the second one on how I generated the word cloud.
Some months later, after I got accepted into the program, I talked with some colleagues about how they chose which research projects to apply, and almost everyone reported having a hard time navigating through the huge list of projects available.
With the feedback I got from my colleagues, I decided to spend some more time this year coming up with a list of suggestions on how Mitacs could maybe improve the platform in which we, students, have to use to choose the research projects we wish to apply for.
Over the first weeks of October, I plan to update this page with the suggestions I have in mind and, if time allows me, come up with a proof-of-concept implementation. Just as a reminder, all the data I am using is publicy available and comes from the Mitacs student portal page. If you have any concerns about that, please send me an email at email [at] fernandobrito.com.