LATROBE, PA – Four Saint Vincent College students in the Data Science and Analytics (DSA) Club achieved success earlier this month during the annual DataFest competition held April 10-12 at Robert Morris University (RMU).
The yearly event is a celebration of data in which student teams work over a weekend to find and share meaning in a large, rich and complex dataset. This was the Saint Vincent College DSA Club’s third consecutive year participating in RMU’s DataFest.
The DSA Club’s project won Best Statistical Analysis for the upper-level track.
Members of the winning team include Mariano Jimenez, a junior finance and economics/mathematics double major who was born in Costa Rica and studies at the College year-round; Peter Kenney, a junior business data analytics major from East Northport, New York; Kecheng “Ricky” Liu, a junior economics major from Qingdao, Shandong, China; and Dominic Rocco, a junior data science major from Upper Saint Clair.
The students are mentored by Dr. Mary Regina Boland, C’10, an assistant professor of data science in the Herbert W. Boyer School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Computing at Saint Vincent College. She also served as a mentor for teams across several schools participating in the DataFest throughout the weekend.
DataFest, founded at UCLA in 2011, is a national student competition sponsored by the American Statistical Association and centered on building student data analysis and visualization skills. A variety of host institutions all hold parallel events, using the same data and prompt, over weekends from March through May.
RMU has hosted a local DataFest competition since 2021 and Saint Vincent College’s DSA Club has participated since 2024.
Saint Vincent’s DSA Club brings together students with a shared interest in exploring, analyzing, communicating and learning from data. The club is co-mentored by Boland and Dr. Justin Petrovich, C’14, associate professor of statistics and business analytics and chair of the Marketing, Analytics and Global Commerce Department at the College.
The DSA Club provides opportunities to participate in data competitions and hackathons, and to demonstrate creative uses of data. While most members major in data science or business data analytics or have a minor in data analytics, it is open to all students with interest in data analysis and geared toward all who are curious about learning with data.
