IEOR alum wins $100k data science competition

Allen Tang (Operations Research & Management Science ’16), along with three other Berkeley students, won a $100,000 prize last week in the Data Open championship, sponsored by the hedge fund Citadel. Tang is currently pursuing a master of science degree at Berkeley in electrical engineering & computer sciences. His teammates were statistics graduate students Sören Künzel and Jake Soloff, and civil and environmental engineering graduate student Eric Munsing.

The competition challenged students to develop research to improve educational outcomes in the United States. Five days before the event, students were given large datasets to use to analyze and create hypotheses.

Overall, 10,000 students applied for 19 regional qualifying competitions to make it to the event.

Read more about the event at Berkeley News, Daily Cal, and Bloomberg.