The Business Analytics Center recently held the Master Modeler Competition, open to all analytics-interested students across Georgia Tech. A great deal of support was provided for this competition by the business analytics community.
Data Sponsorship: Dr. Sam Franklin and team from 360i
Sam's team, including Larry O'Donnell, Gautam Krishna as well as others, were instrumental in pulling the data together, explaining the business questions, among other tactical and critical functions.
Financial Sponsorship:
Thanks Yooniko's CEO Ajit Manjappara for understanding the vision for MMC, and Guy Powell from ProRelevant, and Mark Wallace from Spartan Technologies for also contributing and being involved along the way. The winning teams enjoyed the event and prizes, and your engagement was also greatly appreciated.
Advisory Panel:
The teams were given the option to listen in to suggestions from an Ask the Expert panel of professionals. Thank you so much for taking the time to provide your perspective to our competing teams:
- Kevin Baker, North Highland Worldwide Consulting
- Raj Bondugula and Trevis Litherland, Equifax (and thanks to Alex Vayner for connecting us)
- Dr. Tuhin Chattopadhyay, ValueLabs
- Dr. Kris Hammond, Narrative Science
- Dr. Alex Yurchenko, Black Book
Teams were also given another fantastic speaking / presentation resource: Internationally sought after speaker, author, coach, consultant, and business owner, Jamie Turner from SIXTY. The Business Analytics Center is fortunate to have access to such an incredible network.
Serving on a judges' panel is hard work, and these judges spent the entire day with us through presentations, lively conversations during deliberation, and the final awards ceremony.
- Guy Powell, ProRelevant
- Erik Wilkinson, Spartan
- Rupesh Dandekar, Deloitte
- Kevin Baker, North Highland Worldwide Consulting
- Quy Nguyen, Georgia-Pacific
- Christian Hall, Equifax
- Dennis James, Your Profile Insights
- Dr. Charles Manahan, AT&T Telecom
- Nathan Hombroek, our only student judge - president of our newly formed Business Analytics Club
The winning teams were as follows:
2016 Georgia Tech Master Modelers: Team Data Dynasty
David Salazar, Leah Brohm, Brent Evens, and Amir Alavi
Beyond the prize money, the winning two teams were sent to Purdue University to compete nationally on April 2 - 3 at the Krannert Walmart Data Dive. One of the groups, Team O'Mazing, sent by the Business Analytics Center took first place, surpassing seven teams from other universities participating in the predictive analytics track of the competition.
Members of the winning team include four Master of Science – Analytics students, Brian Burns, Francesco Del Zompo, Amit Ranshinge, and Nityansh Seth. Prizes include $5,000, plus summer internship offers from Walmart. We are very proud of our winning teams, and all the competitors from our inaugural Master Modeler Competition.