Hackathon Draws Competitors Nationwide

Students across the country descended upon the Carlson School last weekend for the third annual Analytics for Good Hackathon—a competition in which teams must deliver data insights to a real-world business problem in just 24 hours.

This year marked the first time the competition opened to students beyond the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus, with 115 students from 12 colleges nationwide participating across the undergraduate and graduate divisions. The Analytics for Good Institute, which hosted the event, worked with the Center for Inclusive Excellence to increase outreach to schools nationwide, including historically Black colleges and universities.

On Friday, teams received the Hackathon mission: To examine how legislation extending employer-paid, job-protected maternity leave impacted women applicants for IT jobs in India. Over the next 24 hours, the students crunched numbers and worked with mentors to refine their analyses. Four finalist teams in each division presented their findings on Saturday to a panel of judges consisting of Carlson School faculty, alumni, and data analyst professionals. When selecting finalists, the judges were blind to which colleges the teams hailed from.

Teams from the Carlson School took home the top prize in each division. The undergraduate winning team consisted of Maxwell Bleick, ‘24 BSB, Lance Platon, ‘24 BSB, Olivia Kusch, ‘24 BSB, Yahye Hussien, ‘24 BSB, and Aaron Melamud, ‘24 BSB. At the graduate level, the winners were Avanindra Singh, ‘24 MSBA, Vaibhav Gakhar, ‘24 MSBA, Amulya Konda, ‘24 MSBA, Likitha Avuthu, ‘24 MSBA, Cody Ortloff, ‘24 MSBA, and Abhishikth Peri, ‘24 MSBA.

As a student passionate about the intersection of people, policy, and analytics, Kusch says it felt meaningful to work with data focused on such an important social issue.

“In the U.S., we don’t have mandated paid maternity leave and it means a lot for women’s financial independence and equality,” Kusch explained. “So it’s a very close issue to my heart and this project ended up being a perfect overlap between HR and analytics.”

The case study came from Assistant Professor Sofia Bapna’s current research on how maternity leave impacts hiring practices. She served as one of the judges on the panel.

"It was impressive to see all the different approaches that the student teams took to tackling the same problem,” Bapna shared. “Competitions like this highlight how data analysis takes a combination of creativity and an analytical mindset.”

After completing the Hackathon challenge, Konda says she feels empowered to take on similar projects in the future.

“Most of the time in the real world, we don’t have the luxury in analytics to sift through data over many months and come up with insights, so this was like a short sprint and it was exciting,” reflected Konda. “I’m walking away thinking now I can tackle any challenge.”

Both winning teams took home a $4,000 prize. A total of $15,000 was awarded throughout the competition. Additionally, the Hackathon featured a career fair and interview workshop. Scholarships were also available for teams from out-of-state schools to cover travel costs.

The Analytics for Good Institute sponsored the event alongside corporate partners 3M and Best Buy. For more information, visit the Hackathon website.