A team of doctoral students from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, studying transportation engineering, recently won first place at the Supply Chain Data Analytics Competition hosted by the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago.

This year’s competition aimed to help Feeding America in its mission to end hunger, by tasking students with the analysis of large-scale data sets. Teams were judged by a panel of industry experts on the quality of their data analysis and the solutions they provided on how the organization could improve its fresh food operations, prediction of donations for food banks, and efficiency of transportation.

The Rensselaer team included Sofia Perez-Guzman, Abdelrahman Ismael, and Carlos I. Rivera-Gonzalez. This was the third annual competition and brought together students from universities across the country.