OSU business analytics team takes top-5 honors at Humana-Mays Healthcare Case Competition
Monday, October 31, 2022
Media Contact: Terry Tush | Director, Marketing and Communications | 405-744-2703 | terry.tush@okstate.edu
A group of Oklahoma State University business analytics students teamed up to place in the top five out of 550 students representing 48 universities from across the nation in the sixth annual Humana-Mays Healthcare Analytics Case Competition.
Amartya Mitra, Tanushree Ghosh, Bhakti Saoji and Mihir Shinde — master’s students in the business analytics and data science program in the Spears School of Business — were announced as a top-five team. They are joined by teams from Washington University in St. Louis, the University of California at Los Angeles (two teams) and the University of Connecticut competing for the $50,000 first-place prize.
“We feel really excited and honored to be one of the top five teams in the competition,” Mitra said. “It was a result of hard work and dedication of the team to develop a competitive analysis. I am particularly thankful to my teammates, Mihir, Bhakti and Tanushree. We are thankful to the MS BAnDS program at OSU for having provided us the learning to succeed in this nationwide competition.”
The Mays Business School at Texas A&M University in partnership with Humana hosts the annual competition, offering an opportunity for master’s students to showcase their analytical skills and solve a real-world business problem for Humana utilizing real data.
In addition to Mitra and his colleagues placing in the top five, 13 other group of
OSU business analytics students were recognized in the top 50 during the first round
of competition. They were:
5. Joe Austin Athimala Maria and team members,
7. Tejaswi Maruthi and team members,
13. Palash Gupta and team members,
15. Kalbe Agharia and team members,
16. Vishal Tyagi and team members,
20. Rafae Abdullah and team members,
25. Kailey Wilson and team members,
26. Shubhi Gupta and team members,
29. Zach Miller and team members,
30. Sai Sreeshma Thupakula and team members,
32. Daniel Marchese and team members,
42. Bharath Raj Muppalla and team members,
44, Ayush Mohan and team members.
The students say the competition is good preparation for their future careers in analytics.
“We faced a challenging real-life healthcare dataset and were tasked with predicting members that may be housing insecure,” Saoji said. “We found ourselves researching the problem statement thoroughly and brainstormed as a team to provide tailored recommendations to various segments of the members that were housing insecure. We learned to answer the ‘so what’ question which is critical for getting impactful insights that add to the business value.”
Mitra concurred and said the student senjoyed the challenge.
“The competition posed a steep learning curve for the team," Mitra said. "This project was a great opportunity to challenge us and work with a large real-world dataset. Competitions such as these really expand the horizon of our thinking abilities and compel us to look for radical ways to tackle real world problems.”
Dr. Goutam Chakraborty, SAS Professor of Marketing Analytics and director of the MS in Business Analytics and Data Science program said the results from the competiton were quite an accomplishment.
“It is amazing to see our MS BAnDS students teams perform so well in national and worldwide competitions,” Chakraborty said. “Being placed in top-5 in such a prestigious tournament is a fantastic achievement by our students. Also, having 14 teams in the top-50 shows the bench strength of our program, the dedication of our faculty and the hard work of our students. I am very proud of all the students.”
For more information about the master’s in business analytics and data science program at OSU, visit the website.