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Three students take the top spots in CAHSI Data Analytics Challenge

Congratulations to the winners of the CAHSI Data Analytics Challenge held at the GMiS 2021 Conference and sponsored by Chevron!

Three students from the University of Houston – Downtown swept the top spots at the CAHSI (Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions) Data Analytics Challenge sponsored by Chevron, taking place at CAHSI Summit held in conjunction with the virtual 33rd Annual GMiS Conference.

The Data Analytics Challenge is a hands-on competition where students work in pairs to find patterns and answer questions about a predetermined set of raw data. The session includes an overview about the relevance of data analytics in the workforce. Final year undergraduate students, and new graduate students are good candidates for this exercise. Over one hundred students from 28 universities participated in the challenge

Dr. Enrico Pontelli, Associate Professor for the Department of Computer Science at New Mexico State University, announced the winners:

1st Place: Data Analytics Challenge

Team: Solo

Phi Le

University of Houston – Downtown

Model: Random Forest Regression + parameters tuning

R^2 score: 0.9757

2nd Place: Data Analytics Challenge

Team: UHD2021

Dung Dang, University of Houston – Downtown

Zan Zan, University of Houston – Downtown

Model: Random Forest Regression + parameters tuning

R^2 score: 0.9711

Since 2015, CAHSI has partnered with the Great Minds in Stem (GMiS) conference, previously known as the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corporation (HENAAC) conference, to provide students who attend the conference an inspiring experience and to give them the chance to discover and become excited about the career and internship opportunities that are available to them as students majoring in computer science, or another STEM field.   

The CAHSI Summit, in conjunction with the GMiS Conference, is an annual event that engages faculty, students, industry, and other collaborators in activities that build connections; disseminate effective and promising practices; prepare students for pursuing higher education and productive careers in computing, and promote conversations and actions that address the advancement of Hispanics in computing.

Congratulations to first place winner Phi Le and second place winners Dung Dang and Zan Zan! A special thank you to CAHSI for being a GMiS 2021 Conference Academic Host and introducing our organization to great minds in STEM from across America