Data 101 Students Win $2,000 and a Trip to San Francisco for the Wells Fargo Analytics Challenge

Congratulations to Jake Schwarztrauber, Katie Hane Balcewicz, and Danielle Joy Schwartz!

After rigorous judging by experts in the field of Data Science, the Data 101 students were selected as one of five winners in the Wells Fargo Campus Analytics Challenge to receive a prize package. The package includes $2,000 cash and a 3-day/2-night trip for one from March 1-3, 2016 to attend a Wells Fargo Analytics Summit and awards ceremony in San Francisco, CA.

This was the first year the department’s Data Science program, directed by Dr. Paul Anderson, participated in the Challenge. The data science students competed against 12 top rated colleges and universities across the nation. Teams competed to develop a solution for real-world business questions posed by Wells Fargo’s Enterprise Social Media and Enterprise Data and Analytics Teams. “The fact that CofC students won, it shows it is about the science and not the pedigree. The group built a true machine-learning algorithm that would be implemented into data science infrastructure and industry”, stated Denise Gosnell from PokitDok.

The department has provided each additional team member a $500 scholarship to assist with travel cost to attend the Summit. “This is truly an amazing accomplishment. Using the techniques learned in our introductory data science course, these students were selected as one of the winners among a group of competitors that included Ph.D. students from Stanford and Carnegie Melon. I am extremely proud of our students,” stated Dr. Anderson.

From Left to Right: Jake Schwarztrauber, Katie Hane Balcewicz, and Danielle Joy Schwartz

From Left to Right: Jake Schwarztrauber, Katie Hane Balcewicz, and Danielle Joy Schwartz