Business Analytics Students Break Down New York’s Renewable Energy Plans
Manhattan College hosted its fifth annual Business Analytics Competition.
Students from 17 colleges and universities from the United States, Canada and Romania came to Manhattan College this week for the fifth annual Business Analytics Competition.
Their task was to create a presentation analyzing the electricity data from the New York Independent System Operator and the Energy Information Agency. Alongside the other teams, the Manhattan College group of Heyi Cheng ’20, Anthony DePinho ’19, Chris Freund ’20 and Jean-Baptiste Tamas-Leloup ’19 analyzed the data provided and put together a conclusion surrounding Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to boost New York’s Clean Energy Standard from 50% to 70% renewable electricity by 2030.
“It’s been really interesting to apply data to this situation,” Cheng said. “We’re fortunate to be working on the energy sector, especially the renewable resource goals we’ve been studying. It’s been cool to use the skills we’ve learned and apply it to a real-life scenario.”
The group brings a diverse set of backgrounds. The foursome includes an economics major (Cheng), mathematics major (DePinho), a finance and business analytics major (Freund) and a computer information systems major (Tamas-Leloup).
At the beginning of the semester, they began working on what became a four-month, noncredit project, meeting outside of their scheduled classes with Alin Tomoiaga, Ph.D., assistant professor of business analytics.
In the first phase of the competition, the group created a poster presentation delivered to judges from the healthcare, environmental resource and data science fields. The students then received a second data set after the first day of the competition, to present the following day.
The team from Elon University won first prize in the competition, earning $5000 for their school. The Manhattan College team came in third place in the 19-team field, winning $1000 for the College.
“I am very proud of the team. They were excellent,” Tomoaiga said. “One judge said that the level of their visualizations was on par with any other high level Wall Street presentation he had seen.”
The Manhattan College website has more information on the annual Business Analytics Competition.