Cigna

Director Speaks at Cigna Event

The Institute’s director, Dr. Michael Rappa, was the invited guest speaker today to a biannual gathering of the Cigna data organization convened by the company’s Vice President for Information Management and Analytics, Scott Filiault. Based in Bloomfield, Connecticut, Cigna is a global health service company dedicated to helping people improve their health, well-being and sense of security. Cigna has $32.4 billion in annual Continue reading “Director Speaks at Cigna Event”

March Madness

March Madness

It’s “March Madness” at the Institute—and no, we don’t mean hoops! March is the culmination of our annual job placement tournament, when Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) degree candidates make decisions about post-graduation employment opportunities. After hundreds of interviews with dozens of employers, MSA students are on a record-setting pace to become our seventh consecutive class to achieve Continue reading “March Madness”

Lukas Halim

Halim Wins Honorable Mention

Lukas Halim (Class of 2014) won Honorable Mention in the 2014 Student Analytics Scholar Competition sponsored INFORMS and supported by SAS. The competition recognizes outstanding students and provides them an opportunity to learn more about the practice of analytics at the INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research to be held in Boston later this month. Prior to enrolling in the Masters of Science in Analytics (MSA) program, Halim worked as a reporting lead at Accenture, where he developed and delivered dashboards and reports for account executives. He is a 2002 graduate of Yale University.

MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Students Attend MIT Sports Analytics Conference

A delegation of nine students in the Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) Class of 2014 traveled to Boston to attend the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference held in February. Begun in 2006, the annual sold-out conference engages students, sports enthusiasts and industry insiders in a weekend of presentations on the latest in the application of analytics to almost every facet of professional and college sports data. Continue reading “Students Attend MIT Sports Analytics Conference”

Institute Welcomes New Staff

The Institute is delighted to welcome its newest staff members to our team, Jessica Petrus and Megan Meadows. Jessica is a recent business graduate of The Ohio State University, who joins the Institute as program associate. Having specialized in international business, Jessica is fluent in Spanish and Chinese. The Institute’s new admissions coordinator, Megan, joins us from Florida, where she worked for three years in college admissions at the University of Central Florida (UCF) and Seminole State College. Megan earned her bachelor’s degree in business from East Carolina University. The addition of Jessica and Megan brings the size of the Institute’s staff to fifteen full-time professionals. Continue reading “Institute Welcomes New Staff”

Michael Rappa

Director Speaks at Accounting Conference

The Institute’s director, Dr. Michael Rappa, gave a luncheon keynote speech today about the emergence of analytics education at a congregation of accounting professors in Raleigh. The American Accounting Association’s 2014 Accounting Information Systems Section Midyear Meeting and AIS New Scholar Consortium brought together over a hundred accounting faculty from across the country. Founded in 1916, the American Accounting Association is the largest community of accountants in academia.

MSA Recruitment Season Opens

If you’re an employer looking to hire a talented analytics professional in the next 120 days, please let the Institute connect you with one of our 80 candidates in the Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) Class of 2014. The Class Resume Book is now available and free to prospective employers. Please contact us to receive your electronic copy today. We look forward to working with you in the coming months.

Villanes, Dickey Present at SESUG

The Institute’s Dr. David Dickey and Andrea Villanes presented separate work at SESUG 2013 in St. Pete Beach, Florida. Dr. Dickey, a professor of statistics who teaches students in the Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) program, delivered an overview of data mining methods titled Finding the Gold in Your Data. Ms. Villanes, a research associate with the Institute, presented work based on her master’s thesis titled Analytical Approach for Bot Cheating Detection in a Massive Multiplayer Online Racing Game. All of the published papers from the SESUG annual meetings are made available online by the Institute as a courtesy to the SAS user community. The archive contains over 1700 papers presented since 1999.

Neola Wins Scholarship

Steve Neola (Class of 2014) was selected by the NCSU Entrepreneurship Initiative to participate in the Silicon Valley Spring Break Trip where he and 15 other students will meet with entrepreneurs and executives from small start-ups to large multi-national companies to prepare them for starting their own businesses. Steve was selected for the scholarship because he would like to create an automated investment solution for Continue reading “Neola Wins Scholarship”

Michael Rappa

Director Speaks in Silicon Valley

The Institute’s director, Dr. Michael Rappa, traveled to the heart of Silicon Valley this week to speak with attendees at the DataBeat 2013 Data Science Summit. Dr. Rappa shared the dais with colleagues from Stanford and Northwestern in a panel discussion on data science education. Northwestern launched its Master of Science in Analytics program in 2012 and will graduate its first cohort of 30 students this month. The Institute is Continue reading “Director Speaks in Silicon Valley”

Davenport Praises Institute

Wall Street JournalWriting in the Wall Street Journal, Tom Davenport (author of the bestseller Competing on Analytics) praised the Institute’s innovative approach to graduate education as a model to be emulated. Davenport is critical of what he sees at other universities, where analytics degree programs are typically placed in a single school and, as a result, offer a narrow perspective. Lamenting the lack of faculty collaboration, Davenport asks “But why can’t we all get along? The earliest graduate degree in analytics, the Master of Science in Analytics at North Carolina State, was a cross-university initiative from its beginning in 2007.” First proposed by Continue reading “Davenport Praises Institute”

Deadline Nears for International Applicants

December 15 is the priority deadline for prospective applicants who are not U.S. citizens to submit their application for admission to the Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) degree program. The Institute seeks to enroll 85 talented and motivated students for the Class of 2015—the eighth MSA cohort since 2007—which begins classes next June. Continue reading “Deadline Nears for International Applicants”

Guest Speakers Round Out Fall Semester

The Institute thanks the numerous guest lecturers and employers who visited this semester to meet with members of the MSA Class of 2014. We are very grateful for the time they spent sharing information about their work on the front lines of the analytics profession. Visiting lecturers covered a wide range of contemporary topics, from the analytics of software security to the emerging industrial internet, and represented nearly a dozen industries, including aerospace, apparel, banking, consulting, consumer product goods, health care, hospitality, and insurance, among others. Continue reading “Guest Speakers Round Out Fall Semester”

Andrea Villanes

Villanes Speaks on WiCS Panel

Women in Computer Science (WiCS) and NCSU Libraries co-hosted a screening of the documentary She++, which explores the issues around girls, code and computing, followed by a panel discussion with the Institute’s research associate, Andrea Villanes. The panel was moderated by Dr. Lina Battestilli, WiCS faculty advisor, and also included NCSU computer science professors Tiffany Barnes and Sarah Heckman, and Google software engineer Melanie Donny-Clark. In the past decade the number of first-year female undergraduates who expressed interest in a computer science major declined 79%. Continue reading “Villanes Speaks on WiCS Panel”