Dr. Goutam Chakraborty was joined on stage by Oklahoma State University students and alumni at the opening ceremony of the SAS Global Forum 2018.

OSU will represent at SAS Global Forum

Monday, April 1, 2019

A group of business analytics graduate students will represent Oklahoma State University at SAS Global Forum 2019 April 28-May 1 in Dallas. The annual conference draws more than 5,000 SAS enthusiasts from around the world, attracting an audience of international users, executives and academics.

Vishal Gaurav, a second-year student in the OSU master’s of business analytics program, will attend after receiving the SAS Ambassador Award, given annually to only about 10 students worldwide. It marks the ninth year in a row that an OSU student has been recognized with the prestigious award, which includes an all-expense paid trip to the Global Forum to present his paper.

“It’s an honor and a privilege to be recognized as one of the SAS Global Ambassadors,” Gaurav said. “It means a lot and I’m grateful to Dr. (Tim) Krehbiel, Dr. (Goutam) Chakraborty and Dr. (Miriam) McGaugh. I wouldn’t be here without their continuous support and guidance.

“I had a wonderful experience last year at the Global Forum in Denver. I got to meet people from other walks of life and learn about their research, and exchange ideas with industry leaders and domain experts. I thoroughly enjoyed all of my interactions and volunteering experiences, and I look forward to having a similar experience in Dallas.”

For the fourth year in a row, OSU will be represented in the Student Symposium competition as three teams of business analytics graduate students were chosen among the top-eight teams. Each team receives an expense-paid trip and the opportunity to present its research.

Representing OSU are the following teams:

Data Alliance for Science team: Surabhi Arya, Dhruv Sharma, Prashant Gour and JV Vanheeringen;
Echo Escape team: Alex Lobman, Nhan Nguyen, Lohit Bhandari and Ravi Josyula;
The Real Superhosts team: Soumya Kar Choudhury, Rohit Banerjee, Man Singh and Andres Manniste.

“I don’t exactly know what to expect since in all my 20-plus years of professional experience I have never attended a SAS conference,” Vanheeringen said. “Nonetheless, I hope to meet interesting and knowledgeable people that can help me find my way in this SAS world as I expect to graduate next year.”

“SAS Global Forum will be a congregation of great minds who use the power of SAS to portray their skills in the field of data science and analytics,” Banerjee said. “We are looking forward to learning from them and leverage such skills in our field of work.

“My team and I are among the top eight teams presenting at the SAS Symposium. We will try our best to win the competition and make Oklahoma State University proud. But that is not all, as students of analytics, it is always fascinating to learn how others approach a problem and find solutions to it, so we want to experience the hard work put forward by other teams as well and enhance our efforts in the future to be the among the best in the game.”

For more information about the master’s in business analytics program at OSU, visit https://business.okstate.edu/analytics/msban/.

For more information about the SAS Global Forum, visit https://www.sas.com/en_us/events/sas-global-forum.html.