Recap of Melissa at Data@UCI's Embark Datathon
The Melissa Team sponsored and supplied attendees with swag during Data@UCI's inaugural #EmbarkDatathon, at UC Irvine's Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering Building on April 15th. The overall 24-hour event yielded more than 120 participants, mentors, and judges, with a total of 19 teams submitting a project (to view all project submissions, click here).
"The event was an overwhelming success and surpassed even our highest expectations as board members," said Emi Cervantes, Data@UCI's VP of Logistics. "We’ve always dreamed about creating our first Datathon since our club was founded a year ago. The theme we chose for our first Datathon, 'Embark', reflects our commitments to new adventure and fostering growth in our data community. (1)"
UCI's first-ever "datathon" had free admission and featured a keynote, workshops, data challenges, and plenty of networking opportunities. The event brought data enthusiasts and business stakeholders from all over Southern California to resolve real-world problems using data science tools and techniques.
Melissa's aptly named data quality workshop — "Bad Data, Bad Business" — hosted by Daniel K. Le, VP of Data & Analytics, and Ha Phan, Software Developer, took attendees through the stages of the data quality life cycle. The workshop taught attendees how to make the most out of clean data for projects. Attendees who missed, or those interested in, the workshop may click here to download the presentation.
The workshop also gave attendees access to Melissa's Lookups pages, cloud service APIs and programming tools. Melissa's presence at the event signals a fine dynamic between higher education and big data, according to Daniel:
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The inaugural Embark Datathon was a great event bridging the students, academia, and the data industry. The keynote presentations and workshops by Melissa, on the topic of data quality and its impact on data analytics, inspired students to think about, not only what they learned in their courses, but how to apply that to bring value to their work. I look forward to the next event where we can make a positive impact on the students of today and the data wranglers of tomorrow.
Aside from their workshop and swag, Melissa officially launched their Education Portal — an online portal that supplies students and teachers with free data sets. UCI has been an active stakeholder in a handful of Melissa projects. In fact, as stated by David Van Vranken, UCI's Associate Dean, the two have a long, amicable history:
Melissa has been an active partner of UCI for nearly a decade, providing insight and expertise in data science to faculty and students. Their hands-on involvement in, and sponsorship of, our Embark Datathon helps give participants an up-close look at the power of data and the endless possibilities it brings to a myriad of situations. Melissa’s new education portal is a welcome and much-needed resource that will enable students to learn and grow their data skills in preparation for their future endeavors.
If any attendees missed the opportunity to register, they may sign up for the Education Portal by creating a free Melissa account. To access the portal, attendees must register a .edu email when creating a Melissa account.
Since 1985, Melissa has specialized in global intelligence solutions to help organizations unlock accurate data for a more compelling customer profile. More than 10,000 clients worldwide in industries such as retail, education, healthcare, insurance, finance, and government, rely on Melissa for full spectrum data quality and ID verification software, including data matching, validation, and enhancement services to gain critical insight and drive meaningful customer relationships.
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Thank you for sponsoring our first Datathon!