Category: Education

Meet 2021 Scholarship Recipients Federico Chung, Janelle Guse and Anthony Lanier

We are excited to announce three of our 2021 MinneAnalytics Scholarship recipients: Federico Chung of Macalester College; Janelle Guse of St. Catherine University; and Anthony Lanier of Augustana University.

Federico Chung is a senior majoring in economics and applied math and statistics with a minor in computer science. Federico was drawn to the statistics major because he enjoys finding intuition from data and thinking outside the box. Federico demonstrates his passion for problem-solving and data analysis in his coursework and extracurricular activities. He has been part of all data challenges offered by the school including two MinneMUDAC competitions, where he found his passion for data science. He will attend graduate school at the University of Washington where he will pursue a Master in Statistics.

Janelle Guse is a first-year student double majoring in mathematics and data science. During her time so far at St. Kate’s, Janelle has engaged in opportunities to analyze data for social good. For example, in her first-semester data visualization class, Janelle worked with a team of students to visually explore the long-term impact of housing discrimination (in the form of historical racial covenants) on air quality and COVID cases in Hennepin County. Janelle also participated in a “Data Fest” event at St. Kate’s, where students collaboratively explored data on upward mobility from poverty in Ramsey County and were challenged to look for solutions.

Anthony Lanier is a junior majoring in computer science/software engineering and computer information systems. He is also a member of the Augustana University Baseball Team. Anthony chose to pursue computer science while in high school where he maintained the school’s website and was a peer tutor for web development. He discovered an interest in data science while taking a data analytics course that was required for his major. When this spring’s MinneMUDAC competition was announced, he was the first to volunteer, and led Augustana’s team in the competition. Building models and software for this competition allowed him to combine his interests in computer science, data analytics, and sports-related analytics.

MinneAnalytics Scholarships are awarded in the amount of $1000 to undergraduate students who display a passion for pursuing a career in analytics and a commitment to engaging with the community. We look forward to announcing more of our 2021 recipients in the coming months. Thank you to our members and sponsors for making this possible!  Learn more→

High school students invited to explore machine learning at U of M Machine Learning Summer Camp

For the 5th year in a row, the Minnesota Center for Financial and Actuarial Mathematics (MCFAM) within the University of Minnesota’s School of Mathematics is hosting Machine Learning (ML) Summer Camps for high school students. Like last summer, the camps will be held virtually. The three different weeklong camps are co-sponsored by MCFAM, the School of Mathematics and the School of Statistics.

Campers in 11th and 12th grade benefit from a mix of formal instruction on ML concepts and learn techniques and coding in Python in small group projects, ranging from breast cancer diagnosis algorithms that predict benign and malignant tumors to predicting the winner of Pokémon.

At the end of each day, campers meet with guest speakers and gain insight on how ML methods are used by local companies such as Securian, C.H. Robinson, US Bank, Travelers, 3M, and Amazon. Even in the pandemic, last year’s campers said they were “very excited by the opportunity to connect remotely with other high school students (both locally and nationally) who share our same interests.”

Dr. Melissa Lynn, an Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics at Gustavus Adolphus, was one of the instructors of last year’s camp and will be an instructor again this year. Having been involved in this camp for 5 years, she said that for her, “the highlight is getting to watch the students’ presentations at the end of the camp. I am always impressed by how much they learn in only five days, and it is great to see them put it to practice on real datasets!”

MinneAnalytics members can look for opportunities to volunteer and to register their kids for the camps.

Camp Dates:
June 14-June 18: Girls Only Camp (Girl-Identified, nonbinary, transgender girls)
June 21-June 25: All Genders Camp
June 28-July 2: Advanced All Genders Camp

For all the details, visit the Machine Learning Summer Camp webpage.

If you’d like to learn about volunteer opportunities, contact Dr. Gary Hatfield at garyh@umn.edu.