Teradata (NYSE: TDC), the leading data and analytics company, today announced the winners of its annual student competitions, which attracted 41 submissions from 23 universities throughout the world. The 16 finalist teams, selected by a committee of Teradata executives as well as select members of the Teradata University Network (TUN) academic board, presented their work at the Teradata’s PARTNERS Conference and winners were announced on Oct. 25, 2017.
In an effort to address the industry’s ongoing lack of qualified data science and analytics professionals, TUN, Teradata’s academic outreach program, aims to educate students on the latest Teradata technology and analytics tools, ensuring the next generation workforce is ready for career opportunities. Utilizing free, 24/7 access to TUN resources, students learn about everything from analytics (BI) and big data, to data warehousing and data science. The program is unique in its ability to develop skilled students and then connect graduates with data and analytics career opportunities across the Teradata community. TUN has over 4,000 registered faculty members from over 2,500 universities in 117 countries, with tens of thousands of registered students.
Each year, students from around the globe participate in Teradata’s two student competitions. Selected finalists from both competitions earn free registration to Teradata’s PARTNERS Conference, where they present their work to a plethora of data and analytics professionals attending the event. Conference attendees even help select some of the winners. Previous finalists have used the opportunity to network and learn from others in the industry, with some securing job opportunities from Teradata or its customers.
This year’s winners, as well as video links to their presentations, are:
The following list provides more detail for the TUN Award winners by category.
The goal of the Analytics Challenge is to provide students with an opportunity to present their business analytics research or application cases to professionals in the business analytics community.
Overall Winner: California State University Fullerton
The management of care and services provided to the people in an emergency-stuck region (during a hurricane, flood or earthquake, for example) continues to be inadequate globally. There is a huge gap between the demand and supply of healthcare resources. As a result, healthcare facilities observe chaotic utilization, overcrowding of emergency services, and a lack of hospital beds. California State University Fullerton’s research establishes measures to assess the risk associated with the frail elderly population living in a particular region, based on their vulnerability and healthcare reachability.
People’s Choice: Loyola University Chicago
When a GE Transportation (GET) customer experiences a locomotive engine breakdown, GET repairs and tests the engine to determine if it is up to performance standards. Loyola University Chicao’s project focused on both analyzing the time series data from these engine tests, and providing a dashboard that can indicate early signs of failure while painting an overall picture of the sensor data. The results of their analysis provided GET with two major insights: (1) how to reduce the time required for the testing process and (2) how to increase customer satisfaction by optimizing their business practices through an engine monitoring platform.
Best Use of Data Visualization: University of North Carolina Charlotte
Restaurant popularity is often influenced by its location – the dining preferences of consumers at a restaurant highly vary with respect to its neighborhood. This project aims at a comprehensive comparative analysis of opportunities and pitfalls in a restaurant’s business within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County by text mining their corresponding Yelp reviews.
Overall Winner: NIDA Business School (Thailand)
The purpose of this study is to examine whether more complex analytical models, using several data mining techniques, can improve loyalty programs and personalize offers and
campaigns for the right target groups. This study provides the lessons learned from the development of the loyalty program through the presentation of a real-life case study, which can be useful and applicable to both researchers and practitioners.
For the Data Challenge competition, all student teams were provided with the same data set and questions from Teradata’s non-profit partner Rise Against Hunger. With seven finalists teams at the conference, two teams stood out and won the three awards.
Both the Overall Winner and People’s Choice Award: University of North Carolina Charlotte
Hunger and poverty have always been one of the failures of our 20th century. Rise Against Hunger (RAH) is committed to nourishing the underprivileged, responding to emergencies and empowering challenged communities through food, money and donations with an aim of ending hunger. University of North Carolina Charlotte’s project provides RAH with analytical techniques and insights to optimize volunteers, hosts and donations. Their insights will support RAH in their mission of ending hunger by 2030.
Most Value To Rise Against Hungar: Loyola University Chicago
The nonprofit Rise Against Hunger (RAH) provided data on their donation opportunities, contacts and accounts. For this project, Loyola University Chicago performed several analyses and found ways in which RAH can increase donor volume, increase donation revenue, and retain current donors. Their presentation provides insight into how RAH can better serve the impoverished with actionable suggestions.
Teradata University Network is excited to announce that the 2018 Data Challenge charity partner will be the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Information on the 2018 student competitions will be available on January 1st, 2018 at teradatauniversitynetwork.com.
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