By Jill Pease
Undergraduate and master’s students from 20-plus degree programs across the University of Florida — from data science to finance and public health to math — came together March 28-30 to compete in the American Statistical Association DataFest.
Hosted at UF by the Department of Biostatistics in the College of Public Health and Health Professions and the Department of Statistics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, DataFest challenges students to work in teams throughout the weekend to find and share meaning in a large, rich and complex dataset.
“I learned a lot from collaborating with my teammates — all members of UF’s American Statistical Association Statistics Club — and from seeing the presentations of other groups,” said Kejin Dong, a physics and statistics major. “I discovered new insights and approaches to the same dataset that I would have never thought of on my own. I’ll definitely carry these new ideas forward to future projects.”
The event kicked off on Friday, March 28 with a workshop by event sponsor JMP on its visualization software, Graph Builder. Later that afternoon, teams received access to the competition dataset and worked together through the weekend, culminating in five-minute presentations to the judges on Sunday.
“All of my teammates were able to use their unique backgrounds and skillsets to contribute to our project in different ways,” said Nicole Kindel, a master’s student in biostatistics. “I also learned a lot about working with large, real-world datasets, such as dealing with missing values and compiling data into more workable formats.”
Matheus Kunzler Maldaner, a senior majoring in data science, has participated in all three DataFest at UF events. DataFest has also inspired him to participate in other competitions, including five hackathons.
“I am a firm believer that competitions like DataFest are by far the most efficient for students to get experience and fill their resume, especially for younger students,” said Kunzler Maldaner, who plans to continue competing in DataFest as a master’s student. “Over the span of a weekend you will have the opportunity to work with your friends, which requires team collaboration; intensively learn new technologies or skills that you would probably not learn in the traditional classroom environment; have a (potentially) finished project you can add to your resume; and possibly win awards (not necessarily monetary) from your work, which you can also add to your resume.”
This year’s dataset was particularly challenging and required students to choose a focus before diving in to avoid going in too many different directions, said event organizer Steven Foti, Ph.D., an assistant professor of biostatistics.
“Our panel of 12 judges truly thought that every team had at least some part of their presentation that was really well done,” Foti said. “It is really tough to only be able to give out a few awards. I wish we had more than words of praise to give to the rest of the teams because I know they all worked hard all weekend and came up with some really great results. At the end of the day, they have to put all their work into a five-minute presentation and we recognize that is an extremely difficult thing to do when you’ve been working for three days straight.”
Awards were presented to the following teams:
Undergraduate
Best Overall: R Madillos
Breanna Blackwood, Kejin Dong, Casie Lin, Bryn Nurczyk, Zachary Pipping (all Statistics)
Best Visualizations: DSI
Aadhitya Varshan Durgadevi Vijaisenthil (Statistics), Aaron Goffstein (Finance), Ishan Kumthekar (Computer Science, Engineering), Matheus Kunzler Maldaner (Data Science – Statistics), Adit Potta
Judge’s Choice: Real World Engineering
John Crawford (Statistics), Bryson McGinley (Data Science – Statistics), Michael Miarecki (Statistics), Jennifer Moloney (Data Science – Statistics), Aaron Shumer (Computer Science, CLAS)
Graduate
Best Overall: Data Daredevils
Nicole Kindel (Biostatistics), Tracy Lin (Public Health/Biostatistics), Sophia Teklitz (Biostatistics), Mallory Yee (Biostatistics)
“DataFest was helpful for my academic career because it provided me with hands-on experience applying the skills and knowledge from my courses to a real-world dataset to create a story from the numbers,” said Tracy Lin, a combined bachelor’s in public health and master’s in biostatistics student.
DataFest at UF 2025 sponsors include the Tampa Bay Rays, UF College of Public Health and Health Professions, UF Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics, American Statistical Association Florida chapter, UF Warrington College of Business, JMP, UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, UF Health Cancer Center and UF Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering.
“I’d recommend DataFest to any UF student who wants to experience data analysis in a fast-paced team setting, and it’s also a great opportunity for both giving and receiving mentorship,” said Casie Lin, a statistics and economics major. “Plus, the free food all weekend is a great bonus!”
