By Jill Pease
University of Florida undergraduate and graduate students came together once again to compete in the annual American Statistical Association DataFest held April 10-12.
The event drew students from across 16 different majors at UF as well as volunteers and mentors from Ph.D. programs in biostatistics, statistics and pharmacy.
The national case competition is 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.
“This year’s data was very cool and interesting, and the guiding challenge question left teams with tons of different avenues to explore,” said event organizer Steven Foti, Ph.D., a clinical associate professor in the Department of Biostatistics. “We had a lot of variety in insights from the presentations. It was a lot of fun and certainly a challenge for the judges to choose winners.”
Awards were presented to the following teams:
Undergraduate
Best Overall
GatorStats: Alexandra Bochna, Jose Cisneros, Benjamin Robertson, Quinn Yuan
Best Visualization
Markov Unchained: Ananda Chatterjee, Grace Corathers, Neha Jupalli, Chi Mai, Aman Vyas
Judge’s Choice
Kitty Crusade: Allison Baird, Breanna Blackwood, Aaron Gallego, Alex McCaskill, Anh Pham
Graduate
Best Overall
Team BLU: Lily Padgett-Pflucker, Fangyan Pu, Christopher Vo
DataFest at UF 2026 sponsors include the UF AI2 Center, UF Health, UF Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics, UF College of Public Health and Health Professions, American Statistical Association Florida chapter, UF Warrington College of Business, UF Health Cancer Institute, UF Sports Analytics Lab, JMP, and the UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.