–Rob Gould & Linda Zanontian
DataFest celebrated its 15th year in 2025, bringing together 80 undergraduate teams (nearly 400 students total), professional data scientists, alumni, faculty and graduate students for a weekend of data fun in Ackerman Grand Ballroom.
Students began working on April 25 to meet the challenge provided by Savills, an international commercial real estate firm: identify trends in the market place that can help Savills find the best offices for its potential clients. The data set consisted of records on every known commercial lease signed since 2018, and Savills was particularly interested in changes to the market since the pandemic.
A diligent team of judges worked hard to select the best of an extremely creative and insightful set of presentations. In the end, they awarded prizes within three categories in addition to two Judges Choice awards.
The Don Ylvisaker Prize for Best Insight went to team Revenge Arc, consisting of Celine Nugroho, Muhammad Rohan Bodla, Ethan Xiao, Jordan Kikuta, and Christine Yuan. An Honorable Mention was awarded to team DeepThinkers, with Ruchira Bhat, Jack Connor, and Sara Beniwal.
Team Big Data Hiro 6 took home the award for Best Visualization, using an amazing radar plot at the center of a display that integrated a large amount of information. Big Data Hiro 6 was Ryan Chen, Kevin Nguyen, Taylor Prince, Theresa Unsulangi, and Maya Hirsch. Honorable Mention went to NAN sense, with Sean Gee, Angelo Guo, Alyssa Mei, Daniel Pae, and Jared Fong.
This was a DataFest that lent itself well to using external data, and many of the teams rose to this challenge. This made the Best Use of External Data prize very competitive this year, and the award went to team Dart Monkey, with Loretta Hu, Aryan Sunkersett, Anthony Chen, and Aditya Murthy. Honorable Mention was awarded to team Chi-Squared Cranes: Mindy Zhu, Selena Lam, Sanskriti Shindadkar, Clyude Vilacrusis, and Vivian Yee.
The judges may, at their discretion, award up to two Judges Choice awards, and this year they gave two awards. One Judges Choice was awarded to the Data Engibears for the impressive way they seamlessly folded external data into their narrative and their strong story telling. The Data Engibears are Anna Dupree, Allison Lynn, Melissa Chang, Cassidy Sadowski, and Emma Morrison. The other award was presented to YooHoo, who enacted an Oscar-worthy presentation with solid statistical skills. The YooHoos are Mingyang Li, Yuhan Xie, Daniel Wang, Oscar Su, and John Tan.
DataFest 2025 was organized by an amazing team of undergraduate students, assisted by Dr. Linda Zanontian, who helped smooth the many bureaucratic rough edges. The student planning committee was one of the most enthusiastic yet, no doubt inspired by the leadership of Irene Zhang and Kowen Jeong. Their team consisted of Arushi Gupta, Tselmen Anuuarad, Morgan Fu, Aida Duong, Kevin Baer, Abigail Shih, Madelyn Yip, Leah Shin, Shaina Dulles, and Caleb Williams.
The secret to DataFest’s success, beyond the students, is the group of selfless and talented mentors who volunteer time to answer the teams’ questions, coach them along, inspire them, and give them feedback. This year we had over 100 mentors and volunteers, including many of our own graduate students from all three programs and our faculty. We also had a large number of alumni return back to campus and many mentors from outside UCLA volunteer their time. We are very grateful for all their support.
The judges had a challenging task to select finalists and prize-winners in very short time, but, as always, they came through. We’d like to thank Mark Handcock for chairing the group of judges, as he has 14 of our 15 years. Thanks to Go Ito (Disney), Jack Miller (UCSB), Shantam (Google), Wayne Smith (CSUN), Guani Wu (UCLA), James Wilson ’19 (HBO Max), Jamie Haddock (Harvey Mudd College), Weixin Yao (UCR), Elizabeth Frank O’Neill, (EDI and UCLA graduate student), Jeremy Guinta (Ankura), Joseph Zoller (UCLA), LE Wang (Loyola Marymount University), Mark Hubert (Claremont McKenna College), Annie Flippo (Urgently), Jeremy Weidner (Legacy.com), Mine Dogucu (UCI), Juana Sanchez (UCLA), Olga Korosteleva (CSULB), Nate Langholz (IBM), Brian Jerskey (CSULB), and Omar Moore (Tixr). Very special thanks or due to Devon Munos, Senior Vice President from Savills, who both served as a judge and also helped bring the data to the students, along with her colleague Associate Director John Rissmiller.
DataFest is an expensive endeavor, and our undergraduate fundraising team came through with record numbers this year. They tirelessly sold flower bouquets, handmade chocolates, and t-shirts to help get funds to host the event. They were also able to secure our sponsors who contribute so much to the overall success of our event. A huge thank you to our dedicated sponsors Vornoy Partners and Ankura, both for sponsoring at the Cauchy Level ($5000), Analysis Group and Resolution Economics, for sponsoring at the Pareto Level ($2500), Chyma Bioventures, for sponsoring at the Lognormal Level ($1000), and SCASA (Southern California American Statistical Association) for sponsoring at the Weibull Level ($500). Thank you to Chipz Happen, SingerLewak, FTI Consulting, Github, and Tixr for sending us swag and goodies. And thank you to our alumni and friends of DataFest for supporting our event each year with funds and contributions. Without you all, this event would not be possible!
UCLA is facing severe budget cuts next year, and the success of DataFest 2026 will depend on our fundraising. Please consider contributing by visiting http://datafest.stat.ucla.edu/support-datafest/giving/ or by contacting Emily Bisno at ebisno@support.ucla.edu
Alumni, we will happily send you a department t-shirt in return for your contribution. Please email linda@stat.ucla.edu if you’re interested in receiving a T-shirt!
If you think your business or research might have data that would make for a good DataFest, please email rgould@stat.ucla.edu.
–Rob Gould, DataFest Founder
–Linda Zanontian, DataFest Director