Lucinda Peng is a junior majoring in Econometrics and Quantitative Economics. She learned about the ATLAS Internship Program through department emails, newsletters, and classmates, and joined to apply her quantitative and technical skills in a real-world setting. In her first semester as an intern, she works as a Research Intern for Professor Rini Mehta in the Department of Religion, focusing on data and mapping projects. Her primary responsibilities include building a searchable database of Indian-origin places of worship in the U.S., collecting and cleaning location data using R, Python, and Google Maps geocoding tools, and designing metadata structures and ontologies in Omeka S to enhance accessibility and visualization of cultural and geographic information.
Through this experience, Lucinda has strengthened her technical abilities in R, Python, web scraping, data cleaning, digital mapping, and data visualization. She has also gained hands-on experience with Omeka S, learning to use ontologies for digital curation and semantic data organization. In addition to technical growth, she developed stronger project and time management skills as she balanced accuracy, workflow, and weekly progress goals.
A key lesson she has taken from her internship is the importance of interdisciplinary data work, integrating technical skills with cultural and contextual knowledge to create meaningful datasets that support research and storytelling. Looking ahead, Lucinda plans to pursue a career in data analysis and policy research focused on economic development, with interests in policy evaluation and data visualization. Outside of academics, she practices Kendo, a Japanese martial art that helps her stay focused and disciplined.