By published on Apr 3rd, 2026

At the UCLA Library Data Science Center, we pair researchers with students who know how to work with data. The DataSquad handles the technical parts: cleaning datasets, writing code, building visualizations.

All DataSquad members can help with:

• Coding Consultations
• Data Cleaning and Manipulation
• Data Visualization
• Statistical Consulting

Book a Zoom consultation through our Calendly, or stop by walk-in hours at Room 11630L in YRL, behind the sliding glass doors past the Collaboration Pods. View walk-in hours on our contact page.

DataSquad Members:

Lian Elsa Linton is our Project Manager. She is a second-year Computer Science and Engineering student who works in Python, Java, C++, Swift, and React.js, and holds a GIAC cybersecurity certification and a top-10% TestDome Python certification. Her project list gives a sense of the range: a VR meditation app that responds to your heart rate, an iOS waste-sorting app trained on 12,000 images, and a map of LGBTQ+ historical landmarks along LA transit routes. She won first place at QWERHacks and currently builds apps for nonprofits through Nova Tech for Good. Outside of coding, she does Bollywood dance, sings, and speaks Malayalam. Lian also supports work in full-stack web development, machine learning, iOS development, and cybersecurity.

Connor Lim is a fourth-year Mechanical Engineering student from Danville, CA. He interned at Tesla and specializes in 3D printing and opto-mechanical design. He is also part of the UCLA Quantum Light Matter Cooperative, helping build an electron beamline, a device that shoots electrons at metal to release X-rays.

Connor can officially pole vault 12.5 feet, and he grew out of being allergic to milk. Connor also supports work in 3D data visualization and simulation.

Shawn Wang is a second-year Mathematics of Computation student. He won the 2024 Apple Swift Student Challenge, a global competition where Apple selects a few hundred students for original apps. His entry was Grouper, which uses facial recognition for AI-powered user grouping. He is also a certified barista (SCA Foundation Level), co-authored a machine learning paper on tennis player performance metrics, and does data consulting for nonprofits through DataTalks at UCLA. Shawn also supports work in machine learning, data visualization, iOS development, and Tableau.

Audrey Garcia is a fourth-year Data Theory student with a minor in Geospatial Information Systems. She works in R, Python, and QGIS, and has spent two summers in research roles: one at the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute studying Covid-19 disparities and social vulnerability, one at the California Academy of Sciences mapping species distribution in the Sierra Nevada foothills before and after reservoir construction. She also writes for The Westwood Enabler, UCLA’s satirical newspaper. She is particularly good at translating technical findings for non-technical audiences, which makes her a useful collaborator when research results need to reach a broader readership. Audrey also supports work in data analysis and visualization in R, geospatial analysis, and research communication for non-technical audiences.

Gianna Kim is a fourth-year Statistics and Data Science student with a Bioinformatics concentration. She works in R, Python, SQL, and React.js, and has used all of them in production. This past summer she interned at the Titleist Performance Institute in Seoul, building a biometric scoring system and data visualization web app for athletes from youth to professional level. A personal project back at UCLA ran NLP archetypal analysis on song lyrics using SBERT and PyTorch. Biometric systems and song lyric semantics are a reasonable summary of the breadth. She also did marketing for a nonprofit theater. Gianna also supports work in machine learning and neural networks, statistical modeling, bioinformatics, and data visualization.

Full-time Staff

Tim Dennis is the Director of the Data Science Center and Program Co-Director of the DataSquad.

Leigh Phan is a Data Scientist at the DSC and Program Co-Director of the DataSquad.

Doug Daniels is an Emerging Technologies Librarian at the DSC. He is the go-to for 3D scanning, Potree, and the LuxLab.

Jina (Jamie) Jamison is a Collection Manager at the DSC.