2025 NobleReach Scholar Virginia Partridge Applies AI to Real-World Community Impacts
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When Virginia Partridge MS ’23 began her undergraduate studies in linguistics in 2008, she never intended to study computer science. But a fascination with how computation can be used to understand human connection pushed her down a new path—one that now drives her work applying data science and artificial intelligence (AI) to create meaningful social impact.
Partridge recently became a 2025 NobleReach Scholar in the AI domain, joining 27 other talented recent graduates and early-career professionals applying tech for the public good. Selected from over 1,000 applicants, she and the rest of her cohort have embarked on fully paid, yearlong technology roles within government agencies and mission-driven organizations focused on public service.
As a NobleReach Scholar, Partridge will continue her work as a research fellow at the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences’ (CICS) Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. There, she builds meaningful partnerships with government, industry, and nonprofits, helping them apply data science and AI to tackle real-world challenges and improve community outcomes.
“As I’ve matured and found my place in the world, I’ve been thinking about how the work I’m doing can support community—both my community and the global community I care about,” Partridge said. “I believe NobleReach has that at their heart. They want to help people have better interactions with government and become more engaged with their community and with civic groups. That really resonated with me.”
Only a few months into the program, Partridge said she’s already attended NobleReach boot camps in Washington, D.C., meeting with other scholars and undergoing training on innovation in government—gaining insights that guide her efforts at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
‘Co-Building’ Community and Understanding
Collaboration is also central to Partridge’s work at UMass, where she’s been a key player in many projects at the Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. Partridge expects the vast professional network and knowledge she’s building as a NobleReach scholar will help advance these efforts.
"I applied for the NobleReach fellowship to be in community with people who are trying to do the kind of civic outreach ... that I do here at UMass,” she said. “I definitely have felt like I’ve gotten that.”
More specifically, Partridge provides technical leadership to the center’s Data Core program, a team of data scientists and software engineers that partner with researchers, industry, government, and nonprofits to leverage generative AI, data science, and other technologies to help them achieve their organizational missions. She has also administered the Data Science for the Common Good Summer Program since 2022, which unites students, professionals, and researchers in a common goal to craft prototypes and data analyses for nonprofit, civic, and government stakeholders.
“We worked with the Red Cross, iNaturalist, and Doctors Without Borders—all kinds of organizations doing humanitarian work and environmental conservation work,” Partridge said.
Partridge’s work extends beyond nonprofits and civic organizations, from developing machine learning models and prototypes for businesses to working with UMass Amherst Department of Linguistics Professor Joe Pater and the UMass Computational Phonology Laboratory on a project that converts speech into the International Phonetic Alphabet.
This past year, Partridge also helped draft the proposal for the AI for the Commonwealth program, which similarly brings Manning CICS undergraduates and other collaborators together to streamline operations and improve the delivery of services and programs for Massachusetts institutions and residents.
"I’m hoping to grow that program as well,” she said. “I already had a really successful first year.”
Partridge sees her time as a NobleReach scholar as an opportunity to help demystify the role data science and AI plays in solving real-world challenges.
“I think what I care about most is talking with people in the community and doing this sort of ‘co-building,’” she said. “It’s about people helping people understand data better and getting it into their hands, so that the community can understand it and do what they feel is necessary with that data.”
‘Human-in-the-Loop' as the Future
Looking ahead, Partridge sees data science and AI as complementary to human involvement and oversight—a tool that increases accessibility to discovering solutions that will benefit the public.
“I see it as a ‘human-in-the-loop' system,” she said. “I think it has potential to help people do things a little more quickly or categorize data more quickly.”
For graduate students or researchers seeking to connect their technical expertise to public service work, Partridge said the best advice she could give is “to not start with the technical solution. I’ve done a lot of volunteering in a completely non-technical capacity with different organizations, and through doing that work you understand what challenges these organizations face. That was really meaningful for me. It taught me a lot that I didn’t recognize until later.”
For now, Partridge said she’s excited to see how her takeaways from discussions with other NobleReach scholars and insights from lecturers will change over time.
“I’m going to look back on this a year from now and take a totally different message away from it,” she said. “I’m looking forward to seeing that develop over time as I think back.”