More than 140 graduate students were recognized during the annual SAS Analytics Day
on the campus of Oklahoma State University.
The Spears School of Business and long-time partner SAS, a leading provider of business
analytics software, teamed up to award more than 140 graduate students with data mining
and business analytics certificates during the annual SAS Analytics Day earlier this
month on the Stillwater campus.
The conference links Oklahoma State University’s data mining and business analytics
certificate programs and students who are trained in analytics using SAS with members
of the local and regional business community.
SAS Analytics Day, organized by the Center for Executive and Professional Development
in the Spears School, introduces OSU’s certificate programs to businesses and allows
students and businesses to begin building their professional network. The interdisciplinary
program this year awarded certificates to OSU graduate students from the MBA program,
management science and information systems (MSIS), industrial engineering and management
(IEM), statistics and other disciplines.
OSU’s nationally recognized program is led by Goutam Chakraborty, professor of marketing
and founder of the SAS and OSU data mining and analytics program.
“OSU’s Spears School of Business has the largest and one of the best data mining and
analytics programs in the country in partnership with SAS,” said Chakraborty. “The
conference was highly successful in connecting analytically trained graduate students
from OSU’s data mining and analytics program with businesses from Oklahoma and beyond.”
More than 240 people attended the conference including about 130 business professionals
representing over 70 companies. Twenty-five student posters were presented at the
conference highlighting students’ project and research work with mining of large data
sets.
Speakers included Armistead W. Sapp, Senior Vice President and leader of the software
research and development divisions and P-20 division at SAS Institute’s world headquarters
in Cary, N.C.; Kerrie Adams, Director of Customer Analytics at Walmart; Sterling Price,
Director of Customer Analytics for Global Customer Insights and Analytics at Walmart,
and Vicky Svidenko, Director of Applied Statistical Engineering (ASE) and leader of
a team within the Xbox Devices organization of Microsoft; Prashant Pai, Director of
Risk Consulting within Global Professional Services at SAS Institute Inc.
In addition, a panel discussion was moderated by Amit Kadam, Director of Digital and
Data Analytics at Spark SMG, with panelists Jiawen Liu, a SAS consultant at Qualex
Consulting Services, Inc.; Garima Sahney, a Senior Statistical Analyst for the Information
Systems Division at Walmart; Mantosh Kumar Sarkar, an Advanced Analytics Consultant
at Verizon, and Hari Hara Sudhan, a Senior Business Analytics Consultant with Kavi
Associates.
For more information about the SAS Analytics Day visit http://cepd.okstate.edu/conferences/sas/. For information about the SAS and OSU Data Mining and Analytics certificate program
visit http://analytics.okstate.edu, or contact Chakraborty at 405-744-7644 or by email: goutam.chakraborty@okstate.edu.
