Data Challenge Hones UNB Students’ Skills And Creates Connections To Future Employers
The University of New Brunswick’s faculty of management prides itself on experiential learning so that undergraduate and graduate students can successfully transition to the workforce.
UNB business students have opportunities to apply their classroom knowledge to real-world problems in many of their courses and extracurricular programs at the university. The annual Data Challenge is a prime example. Students from several universities compete to test their analytical skills by working with a set of raw data to address a real-world challenge.
On November 19, the Data Challenge welcomed data enthusiasts from universities across Canada to shape sustainability and global disease data into stories and deliver actionable recommendations. Students had the opportunity to compete in-person or virtually in three events, including Data Visualization, Data Analytics and a Data Sprint hackathon.
During a panel discussion moderated by TechImpact CEO, Cathy Simpson, students gained industry insights from Ray Harris, founder of Data Wazo, and Jeremy Adamson, Data Science leader and author of Minding the Machines: Building and Leading Data Science and Analytics Teams.
Harris and Adamson shared stories about their own data-centric careers and explored the skillset that employers are looking for beyond technical skills.
“The analytics field is exploding with an abundance of positions for new graduates who want to pursue an analytics career,” said Simpson. “TechImpact sees UNB’s Data Challenge as an important opportunity to connect industry with future employees.”
Before coming together to compete, students were coached by industry experts to help them refine their skills. Harris demonstrated how students could make their data speak in an interactive workshop.
“It’s these sorts of sessions that build confidence and skills in students not only for the Data Challenge but in their data career exploration,” said event organizer Nandi Kaul, program officer with UNB’s International Business and Entrepreneurship Centre (IBEC).
The Data Visualization event was inspired by a course of the same name offered in the faculty of management’s MBA with Concentration in Management Analytics. Teams competing here developed data-driven solutions from open-data sets related to Canada’s sustainable development agenda.
The UNB team, Fredericton Composting Consultants, won first place in the Data Visualization presentation round. Team member Alex Dandridge said, “Students can benefit from participation in a competition format. The opportunity to present to industry professionals and network really added value to my experience.”
Participants in the Data Analytics event delivered insights on the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s “Global Burden of Disease” data.
“We had a great time participating in the three streams of the Data challenge competition,” said engineering student Nasrin Eshraghi Ivari, a member of the UNB team, Co-Exist, which won first place for their presentation.
The judges provided excellent feedback and have motivated us for a career in data sciences. In addition to the mentoring provided to us during the competition, we enjoyed our interaction with fellow participants who will hopefully become future colleagues.”
The Data Sprint hackathon tested participants’ speed, accuracy and creativity. Teams had three days to work on “Project Niagara” and help an Asian telecom company overcome stiff competition.
York University’s team, Robust, won first place in this round.
“It’s an amazing journey competing in a nationwide data challenge with so many great teams,” said Xinke Wang. “We are inspired by how other teams approached the problem and were encouraged to keep exploring the vast land of data science within a tight deadline. It is definitely challenging but also a rewarding experience. It will be one of the highlights of our master’s program. The analytical and business skills developed during the process greatly benefit our future academic and career paths.”
The Data Challenge provides an experiential platform to hone skills while building connections in industry, government and academia. With increasing amounts of data being collected and made available, the ability to analyze and present it in a meaningful way is a valuable skill to grow.
This story was sponsored by the University of New Brunswick’s faculty of management.