STORY: First-Year Oliners Win Awards at the 2026 BOW DataFest
Two Olin College teams—comprised entirely of first-year students—received awards for their work at the fourth annual BOW DataFest in April. Over 60 students from Babson, Olin and Wellesley (BOW) participated.
Coordinated by the American Statistical Association (ASA), DataFest is part of a national undergraduate competition, where over 60 local competitions all use the same data set over seven different weekends. Students work in teams to explore, analyze and present insights from a large-scale, real-world dataset.
Attendees of BOW DataFest pose for a group photo.
"Because the challenge is so open-ended, it rewards creativity as much as technical skill,” said David Shuman, professor of data science and applied mathematics. He was Olin’s faculty representative for DataFest and has organized it eight times, with six of them while a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. “It's a fun, high-energy weekend where Olin, Babson and Wellesley students work together, meet people outside their usual circles, and build community.”
This year’s data and challenge were provided by Stormont Vail Health, a nonprofit integrated health system that has served Kansas for more than 130 years. Over 2GB of anonymized patient data was provided to competitors, and they were asked to explore longitudinal pictures of patients’ journeys through the health system.
The Olin team of Prem Sethumadhavan ’29, Yong Lu ’29, You Morita ’29, Tan Vu ’29 and Yin Zhou ’29 won Best in Show, and their group explored how lifestyle habits relate to unplanned hospital readmissions.
The Olin team of Sethumadhavan ’29, Lu ’29, Morita ’29, Vu ’29 and Zhou ’29 pose for a photo after winning Best in Show at BOW DataFest
“It felt amazing; there were so many cool projects there,” said Sethumadhavan. “I'm truly grateful for the recognition and to know that our approach to solving ASA's data problem was a good idea.”
Sethumadhavan was interested in participating in DataFest to apply concepts he learned while taking Shuman's Quantitative Engineering Analysis (QEA) course and in the Machine Learning class taught by Paul Ruvolo, professor of computer science.
The Olin team of Will Beadle ’29, Siddhant Kulkarni ’29, Trevor McDonald ’29, Akil Pugalenthi ’29 and Douglas Sanchez ’29 won Best Use of External Data. Their group explored how the distance from a patient’s home to their hospital is related to length of patient stays when being treated for diabetes.
The Olin team of Beadle ’29, Kulkarni ’29, McDonald ’29, Pugalenthi ’29 and Sanchez ’29 take a group photo after the winning Best Use of External Data award.
“It felt great to see our hard work pay off,” said Beadle. “We ran into so many problems along the way and made a lot of pivots, so it was nice to see that we were able to roll with the punches and create a polished final product.”
“Ironically, I often get excited when a team hits a dead end. In DataFest, dead ends aren’t failures; they’re part of the process. The real magic happens when a team realizes there is too much missing data to answer their original question or their hypothesis doesn’t hold up, and they regroup and discover a better direction. Watching that kind of intellectual pivot is deeply satisfying as a mentor.”
“Ironically, I often get excited when a team hits a dead end. In DataFest, dead ends aren’t failures; they’re part of the process.
The real magic happens when a team realizes there is too much missing data to answer their original question or their hypothesis doesn’t hold up, and they regroup and discover a better direction. Watching that kind of intellectual pivot is deeply satisfying as a mentor.”
David Shuman
Professor of Data Science and Applied Mathematics
Students and faculty were not the only Oliners participating that weekend: alum Casey May ’22 was one of the judges. The teams’ work received feedback on a number of themes, including presentation quality, creativity and analysis.
“We were very impressed by every aspect of the winning team's presentation and analysis, and it was a cherry on top that there turned out to be Oliners on that team,” said May, who is a software engineer at Cyvl. “It brings me immense pride to be part of such a talented community, and I can't wait to see what the first-year class accomplishes in the world of data.”