CSE students among winners of the Health Data Competition

The competition hosted 62 students from 13 colleges and schools across the University of Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (03/14/2025) — University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering (CSE) students were among the winners of the 6th Annual Interdisciplinary Health Data Competition.

The Business Advancement Center for Health (BACH) at the University of Minnesota successfully hosted the competition, bringing together students from across disciplines to explore real-world healthcare challenges through data analysis.  

This year’s competition was themed “Healthcare Provider Deep Dive: Connecting Quality, Payment, and Social Context,” engaged 62 students across 18 interdisciplinary teams from 13 colleges and schools within the University of Minnesota. Each team incorporated perspectives from at least two different schools, reinforcing the competition’s mission to foster interdisciplinary collaboration.  

Participants used curated datasets from data partner, mimilabs, integrating provider demographics, quality performance metrics, Medicare utilization data, and public health indicators to develop innovative, data-driven solutions. The competition was evaluated by a panel of 20+ faculty members and industry experts, with finalists presenting their findings to a distinguished judging panel.  

Competition Winners  

1st Place ($4,000)

Barriers to Equity & Closing the Gap – Improving MIPS to promote health equity (Wanlin Hu, School of Public Health (SPH); Yuka Saito, School of Mathematics/CSE; Subin Jang, SPH; Crystal Zhuang, Carlson School of Management and Minnesota Law School)  

2nd Place ($2,000)

Geographic Disparities in Rheumatoid Arthritis Prevalence, Costs, and Quality of Care Among US Adult Medicare Beneficiaries (Ingrid Rodriguez Aragon, Medical School; Tonushree Dutta, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering/CSE;  Sourav Kumar Ghosh, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering/CSE)  

3rd Place ($1,000)

Bridging the Digital Divide. A Pathway for Small Practices in Promoting Interoperability (Ethan Cannon, SPH; Jake Harmon, College of Liberal Arts)  

Honorable Mention

Social Vulnerability Impacts on Cancer Screening Rate: A Bayesian Multi-level Analysis of Community Health Indicators and Healthcare Access (Pegah Farrokhi, College of Pharmacy; Majid Bagheri Hosseinabadi, SPH)  

The judges included Heather Britt, Executive Director at Wilder Research; Hayley Borck, Managing Director at the Data Science Initiative at the University of Minnesota; Dr. Yubin Park, CEO Mimilabs and Data Partner; and Dr. Benjamin Lynch, Director of the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute at the University of Minnesota.

The event was made possible through the generous support of the University of Minnesota Research & Innovation Office, Research Computing, the University of Minnesota Data Science Initiative, and the Office of Academic Clinical Affairs. 

For more information on the competition, visit the Carlson School of Management website.