Spears School of Business

MS-BAnDS case competition first place team with judges from Love's Travel Stops.

 

The Master’s in Business Analytics and Data Science program (MSBAnDS) recently concluded its annual case competition where 14 teams competed for bragging rights and prize money.

 

The students were given two weeks to create a 20-minute presentation over a real-world analytics case provided by advisory board company and supporter of the MSBAnDS program, Love’s Travel Stops.

 

Out of the 14-team field, the four top teams were chosen to move on to the final round where each presented to a team of judges. 

 

Judges included: 

First round

• Michael Rom, Love’s

• Sara Clifford, Love’s 

• John Moss, EY

• Stewart Shelden, Love’s

• Heather Pianalto, Love’s

• Neetha Sindhu, Envoy Global

• Nate Roper, Love’s

• Emily Cavett, Love’s

• Lohit Bhandari, CSL Behring

• Jenny Tran, Love’s

• Blake Engelman, Love’s 

• Maryam Taherirani, NCARB

Finals round (all from Love's)

• Ashley Gockstetter, Director of Strategy Loyalty & Analytics 

• Sara Clifford, Sr. Manager of Analytics & Data Science 

• Stewart Shelden, Manager of Merchandising Analytics 

• Jason Widick, Manager of Retail Space Planning 

• Cristhian Casillas, Retail Floor Planner Lead 

• Emily Cavett, Sr. Retail Floor Planner 

• Michael Rom, Sr. Retail Space Analyst

After each team completed their presentation, they participated in Q&A sessions to help further explain their work and findings to the judges. Judges then deliberated and compared scores of each team. The placements were as follows:

 

First Place ($200 each)

Oluwatoyin Oniroko 

Tristan Schwartz

Gaurav Sharma

Kartikaya Srivastava

Anukriti Tiwari

 

Second Place ($100 each)

Shakawat Hossain

Kusuma Lanka

Moumita Sen

Sunanda Sen

Joe Vincent

 

Third Place ($50 each)

Drew Chen

Keevin Funderburg

Romit Sen

Sepideh Shahriary Nezhad

Peter Vo

 

Best Presenter ($100)

Joe Vincent

 

Best Q&A ($100)

Jiaxin (Reina) Han

 

“This case competition is a key learning event of our MS BAnDS program,” said Dr. Goutam Chakraborty, director of the MS BAnDS program. “The ability to work on a real business case with data, under time constraints and then being able to present their analysis to the client company is an incredible learning experience for our students. We are grateful for our long-standing partnership with Love’s Travel Stop who sponsored this year’s project and we thank all the judges from both the preliminary and the final round for volunteering their time and providing valuable comments to each student team.”

To learn more about the MSBAnDS program click here.