Students who applied Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze customer comments won first place among Daniels School of Business teams in Purdue University’s Fall 2024 Undergraduate Research Expo poster competition.
Quantitative Methods Clinical Assistant Professor Xing Wang mentored the team of MGMT 47800: Experiential Project in Analytics students who placed first among several Daniels School teams. YoonJeong Choi, Sahil Maurice, Joshua Ringler, Matthew Russell, Jonathan Damin Shi and Bocheng Wang used NLP to assess customer comments for a packaging company. They analyzed unstructured data and developed machine learning models to help improve the efficiency of client inputs and the company’s operations.
Hundreds of Purdue students from across campus competed in the poster symposium. The expo allows students to showcase their research findings to scholarly judges and helps them improve their communication, presentation and networking skills.
When constructing the team for MGMT 47800, Wang encouraged her students to work on what interests them most. The students worked proactively and collaboratively, and delivered an outcome beyond the expectations of their company partners, she said.
"The students on this first-place team studied NLP while taking the experimental course, making them learn and apply by doing, which is a life skill they will need in the workforce,” Wang said. “Their expo presentation flowed smoothly and answered questions with reliable evidence and clear visuals — and it delivered comprehensive analytical solutions.”
The students’ efforts also benefit the companies that partner with the Daniels School. In the case of the first-place “Customer Feedback Analysis Using NLP Techniques” project, the team helped their partner company rethink its current manual work by incorporating machine learning models, Wang said.
Quant Methods Clinical Associate Professor Matthew Lanham mentored the second-and third-place Daniels School teams. Those research posters examined using an AI-powered model for survivor support in military matters, automating grief stage classification, and more.
The November 2024 research expo drew record student participation.
In the banner photo: Quantitative Methods Clinical Assistant Professor Xing Wang, left, mentored a team of MGMT 47800: Experiential Project in Analytics students to a first-place finish at Purdue’s Fall 2024 Undergraduate Research Expo poster competition.
