The Data for Good Speaker Series is set for 1 p.m. Eastern on December 1, 2023, in the Krannert Auditorium. Questions about this event can be directed to Center Coordinator Kami Copas.

Dr. Alfred Spector
Visiting Scholar at MIT and Senior Advisor at Blackstone

 

Title:
Beyond Models – Applying Data Science/AI Effectively

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Abstract:
Applying data science and artificial intelligence effectively requires a considerably broader focus than just data and machine learning. Based on the speaker and his co-authors' recent book (Data Science in Context, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2022), this presentation distills these additional challenges into a rubric and illustrates its application with a number of examples. Beyond the rubric, the presentation also presents useful frameworks to help in making the complex trade-offs that are often inherent in AI and DS solutions. While the talk should have practical value to those applying AI and DS, it also illustrates contemporary research challenges.

Biography:
Dr. Alfred Spector is a Visiting Scholar at MIT and a Senior Advisor at Blackstone. His career has led him from innovation in large-scale, networked computing systems to broad engineering and research leadership. Recently, he co-authored a textbook, “Data Science in Context: Foundations, Challenges, Opportunities.”

Previously, Spector was CTO and Head of Engineering at Two Sigma Investments. Before that, he spent eight years as VP of Research and Special Initiatives at Google, and he held various senior-level positions at IBM, including as global VP of Services and Software Research and global CTO of IBM’s Software Business. Earlier in his career, he founded Transarc Corporation, a pioneer in distributed transaction processing and wide-area file systems, and he was a tenured professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

Spector is a Hertz Fellow and also a Fellow of both the ACM and the IEEE. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Spector won the 2001 IEEE Kanai Award for Distributed Computing and the 2016 ACM Software Systems Award. In 2018-19, Dr. Spector lectured widely as a Phi Beta Kappa Scholar (for example, on the growing importance of computer science across all disciplines based on the evocative phrase, “CS+X”). He has been a member of the ACM Turing Award Committee and has done national service through chairing the NSF’s CISE Advisory Board and membership on the Army and now the Defense Science Boards. He has had extensive international experience due to broad responsibilities at IBM, Google, and Two Sigma. Dr. Spector obtained a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford and a B.A. in applied math from Harvard.

Nilanjan (Neel) Adhya
Chief Digital Officer, BlackRock

 

Title:
Rethinking the Customer Experience in the Age of Digital Disruption

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Abstract:
Shifts in consumer behavior driven by digital disruption requires brands to rethink and reimagine relationships with customers. Shifting brands to become customer experience-centric requires a fundamental rethinking of the operating model. In his talk, Nilanjan Adhya, will touch on how organizations can succeed in shaping an experience-centric business model, and how proficiency with data, design, and engineering can help organizations create great experiences and shape consumer interaction.

Biography:
Nilanjan (Neel) Adhya is the Chief Digital Officer of BlackRock — the world’s largest investment management corporation. In his role, Neel actively collaborates with marketing, design, product, and sales teams at BlackRock to reimagine all aspects of digital experiences, create new digital innovations, build great experiences, and accelerate transformation across the digital ecosystem. He is passionate about blending design, data, and cross-functional teams to create experiences that people love. Neel has over 25 years of experience working at the intersection of technology, platforms, and people to help global organizations leverage new business models and drive growth. Prior to BlackRock, Neel was the Chief Digital Officer of IBM’s Cognitive Applications Unit and Vice President of Digital Transformation, where he was instrumental in building the digital platforms that power experiences for IBM’s cloud and AI products.

Neel is a keynote speaker at several digital and innovation-focused industry conferences. He frequently shares his thinking on building innovative products and driving transformation in his blog and on LinkedIn. Neel lives in Fairfield, CT with his wife and two kids.

Ranganath S. NuggeHalli
Principal Scientist, UPS

 

Title:
Making of ORION – Sweating the Small Stuff

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Abstract:
In 2003, UPS, the leading logistics provider in the world, and long known for its penchant for efficiency, embarked on a journey to streamline and modernize its pickup and delivery operations. This journey resulted in the “On Road Integrated Optimization and Navigation (ORION)” system. ORION provides an optimized route for each of UPS’ 70,000 U.S. drivers based on the packages to be picked up and delivered on that day. The system creates routes that maintain the desired level of consistency from day to day. To bring this transformational system from concept to reality, UPS instituted extensive change management practices to ensure that both users and executives would accept the system. Costing more than $295 million to build and deploy, ORION is estimated to save UPS more than $400 million annually. ORION is also contributing to the sustainability efforts of UPS by reducing its CO2 emissions by 100,000 tons annually.

This talk will discuss the development of ORION and the hurdles that UPS had to overcome to make the project successful.

Biography:
Ranganath Nuggehalli is the Principal Scientist of Operations Research at UPS. His group is responsible for developing advanced planning systems for use in UPS operations. He joined UPS in 1990 after completing Ph.D. in Operations Management from Purdue University. His childhood interest in improving efficiency led him to operations research. Implementing Operations Research based planning systems is his passion. Unfortunately, he is yet to learn that life is not an optimization process. His research interests are routing and scheduling, network modeling, location analysis, system integration, and computer-human interfaces.
He is a laureate of the Franz Edelman Academy and an Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS) Fellow. He is a current board member of the INFORMS Practice Section.

If you go to his house, you may not get food; but you will always get good wine.

Tim Jacobs, PHD, PE
Director of Research Science, Amazon

 

Title:
Freight Capacity Portfolio Design in Amazon’s Two-Sided Freight Marketplace

Abstract:
In the Amazon linehaul transportation marketplace, Amazon acquires capacity to ship truckloads in its middle mile network and provides capacity to external shippers. Because of Amazon’s high shipment volumes and commitment to rapid delivery of goods to customers, some capacity is most efficiently acquired long before it is utilized, while some capacity is best acquired immediately preceding its use. Amazon’s large internal demand for linehaul shipping means that Amazon is well-positioned to do this, acquiring a portion of capacity through medium and long-term contracts before specific demand for that capacity is identified while delaying the acquisition of dynamically priced spot capacity for highly uncertain demand. At Amazon, we have developed a transportation marketplace, and a series of models and tools, that allow Amazon to use pricing levers to optimize its transportation capacity portfolio. This approach enables Amazon to effectively align capacity risk, supply risk, and price, and to provide carriers and shippers with tools to effectively manage their operations. We give an overview of this marketplace and survey some of the models that we have built to balance and price our capacity portfolio.

Biography:
Tim Jacobs is the Director of Research Science, Middle Mile Planning Research, and Optimization Science for Amazon. At Amazon, Tim’s teams oversee the research and development of mathematical optimization, Generative AI and machine learning applications, and strategic initiatives for middle-mile air and ground logistics worldwide. Tim leads strategic development efforts including the modeling and analysis supporting the design and operation of Amazon’s air and surface networks. His team focuses on the development of innovative algorithms and applications to design and manage the world’s largest integrated air, trucking, rail, and maritime transport business. Previously, Tim held several executive positions at American Airlines, US Airways, and Sabre. Tim received his doctorate in Operations Research and Engineering Systems from Purdue University. He continues to pursue new research initiatives, has authored more than 35 refereed publications, holds multiple U.S. patents within the airline and supply chain industry, and is a licensed Professional Engineer.

Final Round December 1, 2023

              The 2023 Purdue University SAS Optimization Challenge Competition is for all undergraduate and graduate students across the university. This analytics immersion experience provides an opportunity to receive high-quality training in prescriptive analytics using SAS software. Students will learn to formulate and solve common optimization problems using SAS software for 2-3 days, then are challenged to form teams of 3-4 students to solve a challenging case problem. Teams may be composed of all undergraduate, graduate, or a combination of both undergraduate and graduate students. 

To register for this event please visit Login - Pitch (purdue.edu)

Final Round December 2, 2023

At the crossroads of critical thinking, data analysis, artificial intelligence, and communication, this elite case competition is designed to challenge undergraduate and graduate students across the country to compete for $45,000 in prize money.

Registering and paying the $40/team registration fee guarantees the following:

• Expert Training for Free Microsoft Azure Fundamentals and Azure AI^*
• Free Microsoft Azure Fundamentals and Azure AI practice exams
• Free Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Certification exam (for the first 1,500 registrants)
• $99 value/exam available to you at the $40 case competition registration fee!
• Expert INFORMS Job Task Analysis (JTA) Training^* - the “blueprint” for the content of the INFORMS Certified Analytics Professional (CAP) exam.

For more information and to register your team please visit https://business.purdue.edu/events/data4good/

Jointly-sponsored by School of Business Master's Programs, the Krenicki Center for Business Analytics & Machine Learning, #Microsoft, #SILInternational, and #INFORMS, the largest professional analytics organization in the world. This elite analytics competition challenges undergraduate and graduate students all across the country to compete for $25,000 in prize money!

• In Phase I of the competition, students participated in training from Microsoft expert trainers on Azure and AI fundamentals and also received FREE practice exams and certification vouchers on their state-of-the-art Azure platform. All students will received a badge for completing these training courses.
• In Phase II of the competition, teams of students were then tasked to apply that learning using Microsoft and open-source tools to develop a solution to a problem provided by SIL International. Students teams were ranked by their performance on the Kaggle.com leaderboard.
• In Phase III, the top three undergraduate and graduate student teams were invited to Purdue University-West Lafayette for in-person presentations of their solution. These teams will were provided FREE housing and food accommodations and treated like the rock stars that they are. Student teams were expected to present their work by aligning it to the INFORMS Certified Analytics Professional (CAP) 7 JTA domains (e.g., Business Problem Framing, Analytics Problem Framing, etc.), while showing the potential business or social implications that their approach could have that is different from others.

The Krenicki Center is proud to have sponsored the first event callout for The Business Analytics and Information Management Student Association, which was formed to advocate and support the students of the new BAIM undergraduate program. The Association is involved in the community and working towards improving BAIM students’ experience at Purdue. They serve as representatives of BAIM students by gauging their needs, addressing their questions, and working closely with the BAIM administration and leadership as thought partners.

The event was held on September 6, and aimed to reach as many students as possible, providing them with a great opportunity to network with each other and many professionals. There were four areas of focus during the callout by answering questions about internship, connecting BAIM students with professors, connecting students with each other, and introducing the Krenicki Center to students. The callout was hugely successful with 80 BAIM students participating, and benefiting from at least one of the four focuses we planned out.

Purdue's Krenicki Center for Business Analytics & Machine Learning partnered with Discovery Park, Integrated Data Science Initiative (IDSI), and SportsUNITED to bring an exciting Esport Hackathon to the Mid-West. Centered on the Purdue University Campus, West Lafayette, IN teams competed in a 24-hour Challenge, using cutting-edge technology (Machine Learning, AI, AR/VR, NLP, Immersive Media, Machine Vision, Blockchain) to develop innovative data solutions that solve problems for Data Visualizations and Predictive Analytics to support Fan Experience,  eAthlete Training & Performance.

The photo is of winning team along with Krenicki Center Director Karthik Kannan, BAIM Program Director Matthew Lanham, and SportsUnited Rep Oliver Wells

Similar to real-world business projects, the STAMINA4 case competition is an intensive, experiential learning opportunity that allows students to showcase their critical thinking and analytical abilities, communicate their ideas, and demonstrate mental tenacity.  STAMINA4 participants only have four hours to analyze a case and create a presentation to share their recommendations.

The STAMINA4 IT/Analytics Winning Teams: 
1st place Team Analytica consisting of team members:  Juilee Bhosale, Kiran Samayam, Lorena Bustamante and Sonia Daryani.
2nd place Team Savy consisting of team members:  Ananth Nath, Shubham Gupta, Vijaya Rani and Yuvraj Gupta.
3rd place J.A.K.Z Consulting Group:  Alec Riedman, Joseph Sawicki, Kristen Scully and Zoe Jordan.
4th place Winter is Coming:  Fandy Fauzi, Jung Choi, Priyanka Jain and Srijan Saurabh.

The photo is the winning team along with our corporate judges and Krenicki center director Karthik Kannan; Clare Harshey with Crane Division, Susan Rowe with Ogilvy Neo, Dave Suwanski with Nielsen and Bhagat Kandula with Wabash National.

The objective of this conference was to feature speakers from business, economics, statistics, computer science, engineering, and other areas as they explore the use of data science to solve real-world problems.

The Krenicki Center for Business Analytics & Machine Learning and Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP) recently joined together to offer a unique opportunity to Purdue's full time undergraduate and Master's students to work on a real-world data analytics problem faced by CISCO, utilizing a dataset provided by the company. Interdisciplinary student teams analyzed the dataset to come up with recommendations. The top seven teams presented their findings to a panel of judges consisting of senior executives. The winning team was KIME Consulting comprised of Chung Tang from the school of business, Qi Meng from the college of science, Ruoxuan Zhao from the school of business and Xin Wei from The college of health and human sciences.

Teams from Northwestern University and the Georgia Institute of Technology won the inaugural Krannert-Walmart Data Dive on the campus of Purdue University on April 2-3. Each team took home $5,000 in prize money.

A total of 17 teams from 11 universities took part in the competition. Graduate and undergraduate students used Walmart trend data and were tasked with developing solutions in two areas—customer segmentation and predicting products for efficient shelf space usage.

Several Walmart executives were on hand for the 24-hour competition, including Karenann Terrell, executive vice president and chief information officer.

“You won’t find the kind of commitment these students displayed during the competition very often,” Terrell said. “I was incredibly impressed by the breadth and insight of the questions we were asked.”

For Northwestern student Eric Lundquist, who was part of the winning team in customer segmentation, the competition provided real-world perspective to what he is learning in the classroom.

“Statistics are only useful in the extent to which they provide business value and can be communicated clearly and understood fully. We spend a lot of time considering the business value and actionability of our approach, which is something that doesn’t always come up in some of our more technical academic coursework,” Lundquist said.

Georgia Tech’s Brian Burns said his team found the large amount of information allowed them to drill deeper into the company’s issues. “I’ve had experience with data-driven decisions prior to this competition, but what Walmart’s data set highlighted is that strategic decisions can become more granular as the volume and variety of information becomes larger,” Burns said.

In addition to the winning schools and the host team from Purdue, the competitors included entries from Indiana University, Michigan State University, Ohio State University, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, University of Iowa, University of Maryland, University of Rochester and University of Texas-Dallas.

The competition is believed to be the first data dive on a college campus. It was organized by Mohammad Rahman, associate professor of management at Purdue’s Krannert School of Management, and was the first major activity conducted by Purdue’s Krenicki Center for Business Analytics & Machine Learning.