Chase Dawson is a third-year University of Virginia computer science student who was determined to overcome setbacks from the pandemic. Dawson originally planned to spend the summer in Denmark and France gaining first-hand knowledge about international sustainability issues. When travel became impossible, he looked for another way to apply his education toward good. Enter theData Science for the Public Good Young Scholars program. The internship program is offered through theUniversity of Virginia Biocomplexity Institute's Social and Decision Analytics Division. Students from diverse disciplines spend a summer learning by doing, participating as part of multidisciplinary teams on data science research projects at the intersection of statistics, computation and the social sciences. Teams work directly with stakeholders to solve problems that transform communities.