More than 100 University of Michigan community members gathered Monday night at the Ross School of Business's Tauber Colloquium for the seventh annual datathon hosted by the business school's Business+Tech initiative in partnership with consulting firms PwC and Deloitte. Participated.
Participating teams of five to six students were given a dataset and spent a week creating a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The event culminated in a week-long “hack-at-thon” competition in which 22 teams presented their solutions to a panel of judges and the winning team was awarded up to $3,000.
Emilee Studley, Business+Tech Program Manager, has been with Datathon for two years. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Studley said he believes the competition provides a great opportunity for students from a variety of research fields to work on problems outside of a classroom setting.
“It's a really unique way to work on a problem with a project team and lean into the ambiguity,” Studley says. “We don't tell you what to do. You have to go and find it. After being in a classroom where you're given a rulebook or a syllabus and told what to do online. Now, this is very rare.”
NaveenJohn Premkumar, a junior in the College of Engineering and a member of this year's winning team, said in an interview with The Daily that he appreciated getting feedback on his work from others at the datathon.
“My favorite part was sitting down (with the team) and refining the presentation,” Premkumar said. “It's one thing to type it on a slide, it's another to hear what others have to say, it's another to go to office hours and get expert advice.”
Second-year business student Mariam Hamka told the Daily she enjoyed learning from other competitors.
“As I sit here and listen to all the solutions, which groups are more technology-focused, which groups are more business-oriented, and how has that led them to success? It was very interesting to see what happened,” Hamka said.
Hamka said that while she was initially intimidated by the idea of participating in the datathon, she is now eager to participate in similar events in the future.
“I had a business background, but I was always interested in engineering, so I wanted to see what was on the other side,” Hamka said. “Technology is very important for the consulting job I want to get in the future.”
The datathon provided an opportunity for students to solve real-world problems and focus on the intersection of technology and business. Some students, like LSA senior Makayla Beardsley, told the Daily that the datathon helped them better understand the intersection of technology, business, and other fields such as sustainability.
“I think sustainability is really important,” Beardsley said. “As we move forward, it's a great idea for technology companies to get more involved in making the world a better place.”
Daily staff reporters Elizabeth Stafford and Edra Timmerman can be reached at: libstaf@umich.edu and edrakmt@umich.edu.
