Three computer science students from the College recently wowed judges in the Wells Fargo Campus Analytics Challenge, each scoring a trip to San Francisco and a cash prize. Jake Schwarztrauber, Katie Hane Balcewicz, and Danielle Joy Schwartz were one of five winning teams from the November competition, which asked students to develop a solution for a real-world business question posed by Well Fargo’s Enterprise Social Media and Enterprise Data and Analytics teams. The students’ victory is particularly impressive because the competition was exceedingly stiff.

“This is truly an amazing accomplishment,” said Assistant Professor Paul Anderson, director of the College’s Data Science Program. “Using the techniques learned in our introductory data science course, these students were selected as one of the winners among a group of competitors that included Ph.D. students from Stanford and Carnegie Mellon. I am extremely proud of our students.”

Schwarztrauber, Balcewicz and Schwartz will travel to San Francisco in March to attend the Wells Fargo Analytics Summit and collect their awards, which includes $2,000 cash for each student. The College’s computer science department has additionally awarded each student a $500 scholarship to defray travel costs.

This was the College’s first year competing in the Wells Fargo contest. For more information on their performance and other computer science news at the College, check out the Department of Computer Science’s blog.

From left to right: Freshmen computer science students Jake Schwarztrauber, Katie Hane Balcewicz, and Danielle Joy Schwartz.

Left to right: Freshmen computer science students Jake Schwarztrauber, Katie Hane Balcewicz, and Danielle Joy Schwartz, winners of the Wells Fargo Campus Analytics Challenge.