Info Challenge Projects

The University of Maryland Global Classrooms program allows UMD students to gain international experience in a virtual learning environment. After the COVID-19 pandemic, Global Classrooms courses and participants have increased significantly, and the Office of International Affairs seeks to understand student diversity trends for past semesters. Students will use their creative insights on how variables such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, and residency from past student data can be used to compare diversity trends by semester, academic year, and student status.

Project Participants:

Alanna Hart, Anita Conteh
Mentor: Margaret Kahl
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Brita Laveck, Ellen Kim, Tartela Tabassum
Mentor: Adam Lee
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Jaehyun Lee, Daniel Yu, Eojin Kim
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Majdoleen Mohammedaman, Reem Saleh
Mentor: Prasad Senesi
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Grant Glasgow, Ben Keenan
Mentor: Mark Magsino
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Harshitha Ramachandra, Shashank Ramprasad
Mentor: Tatyana Yevgrafova
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Osinakachi Amaefule, Cecilia Chavez, Jaclyn Tran
Mentor: Jeffrey Zuback
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Christine Wang, Anthony Avelar
Mentor: Jeffrey Zuback
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Ramith Wijesinghe, Matthew Chin, Kidus Solomon, Courtney Brandon
Mentor: Maria Bardossy
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Sehba Wani, Josue Tlapechco, Vienna Nguyen
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When crisis responders react to ongoing emergencies, they need to know what new critical developments have occurred in the past several hours. Oftentimes, responders are able to find this information through social media, however, finding the most important information first is crucial. By analyzing different social media platforms and news sources, construct daily summaries of Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Dorian using a digital version of FEMA’s Incident Status Summary form and utilize this data to assess which platforms provide the most useful information for emergency response personnel.

Project Participants:

Ivan Thomas
Mentor: Dan Roche
Link to project

Bennett Huffman, Maurice Salayon
Mentor: Dan Roche
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Hanna Zakharenko, G Goodwin
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Sadaf Davre, Tiara Eltrevoog, Sarah Zachariah
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In 2018, Washington State enacted stronger distracted driving laws, and in response, a survey was developed to evaluate residents’ understanding of the new Driving Under the Influence of Electronics Act, which was conducted in one-month time periods over the past four years. We are curious to know how public perceptions of this new act have changed over time, particularly among demographic subgroups. This analysis will be used by the Public Health Seattle-King County (PHSKC) to target specific subgroups for media outreach, materials, and infographics, which students can also contribute to in addition to their analysis.

Project Participants:

Aditya Kiran Aswin Kumar, Rajeevan Madabushi, Sravya Lenka, Srikanth Parvathala
Mentor: Brian Wilkinson
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Manas M Bhat, Shantanu Parab, Vineet Singh
Mentor: Jeffrey Zuback
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Gunakshi Sharma, Dhiraj Lahoti, Shweta Salelkar, Sakshi BR Patil
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Thomas Cho, Jenna Han, Joshua Kang, Daniel Shin
Mentor: Duy Duong-Tran
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Malcolm Rivers, Ryan Grafman, Christopher Hom
Mentor: Nate Chambers
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Angelina Cheng, Caroline Irwin, Harrison Morrow
Mentor: Duy Duong-Tran
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Aedan Ounsamone, Lindsey Beiche
Mentor: Nate Chambers
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Justin Werner, Alexander Grande
Mentor: Duy Duong-Tran
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Aiden Patel, Chris Kim, Myles Evans, Ola Kwasniewski
Mentor: Justin Blanco
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Ashley Yi, Nicholas Munoz
Mentor: Nate Chambers
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Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Washington State has experienced an unprecedented year-over-year increase in traffic fatalities. The Washington Traffic Safety Commission (WTSC) manages traffic safety behavior programs and media outreach for various communities. However, we are curious to know if the people living in these communities are the same people involved in the crashes where occur there. By analyzing datasets of crash data, students can answer questions such as: what proportion of drivers are involved in crashes in communities where they live? Are there specific zip codes where higher-risk drivers tend to be more common than others?

Best Team Presentation
Micah Tracy, US Naval Academy
Rhys Winter, US Naval Academy
Kaosi Unini, US Naval Academy
Ryan Zhang, US Naval Academy
Team IC23044
Challenge: Washington Fatal Crash Files – WTSC (Data Analysis, Level 4)
Mentor: Fiona Knoll

Outstanding Data Analytics Project (Tie)
Gabriel Duran, UMD
Keshav Gupta, UMD
Soham Pawaskar, UMD
Team: IC23048
Challenge: Washington Fatal Crash Files – WTSC (Data Analysis, Level 4)
Mentor: Vikrant Aute

Outstanding Data Analytics Project (Tie)
Anna Lavrentieva, UMD
Iris Yu, UMD
Ethan Taggart, Montgomery College
Christopher Way, UMBC
Team: IC23058
Challenge: Washington Fatal Crash Files – WTSC (Data Analysis, Level 4)
Mentor: Chauncey Robbs

Project Participants:

Jarrar Haider, Akhil Reddy, Eshan Agarwal, Chaitanya Pohnerkar
Mentor: James Li
Link to project

Xirui Han, Johannah Ryan, Tam Thu Doan, Kevin Weiner
Mentor: Kunpeng Zhang
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Jimmy Nguyen, Anthony Capasso, John Dutan
Mentor: James Li
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Zizheng Zhang, Xiaoze Liu, Wangxi Pan
Mentor: Vikrant Aute
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Matthew Purvis, Aidan Aguilar, Olivia Love, Danny Taylor
Mentor: Justin Blanco
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Caden Chau, Christopher Jones
Mentor: Dan Roche
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Rhys Winter, Micah Tracy, Ryan Zhang, Kaosi Unini
Mentor: Fiona Knoll
Link to project

Keshav Gupta, Soham Pawaskar, Gabriel Duran
Mentor: Vikrant Aute
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Kent O’Sullivan, Nicole Schneider
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Iris Yu, Anna Lavrentieva, Ethan Taggart, Christopher Way
Mentor: Chauncey Robbs
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Under HIPAA (the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), every person has a right to access healthcare data about themselves. The State of Minnesota’s Department of Human Services (DHS), along with every other state, is developing tools to allow individuals’ to exercise their right to easily access their health data. MN DHS is seeking students’ help to create a simple, yet comprehensive series of screens for future healthcare uses. Students will use their creative abilities and UX/UI design skills to create user-friendly wireframes that make healthcare data accessible and provide easy to understand screens for current and future patients. 

Project Participants:

Makda Demleash, Fatma Fadlelmola
Mentor: Miles Calabresi
Link to project

The Council on the Preservation of Anthropological Records (CoPAR) was an organization founded in the 1990s to promote archiving and discovery of archival materials for cultural materials around the world. Since then, its website has remained the main resource for information about where to find anthropology archives, and how to encourage archiving practices among anthropologists. The current format of the CoPAR website is outdated, counterintuitive, and difficult to search and navigate, and resources are not presented in a visually compelling format. Students are tasked with brainstorming ideas and redesigning the website, improving user-friendliness, and developing visualizations that will facilitate greater access.

Grand Prize
Dharini Chandrashekar, UMD
Amanpreet Kaur, UMD
Team IC23063
Challenge: CoPAR Website Concept Design – UMD iSchool (Design)

Project Participants:

Dharini Chandrashekar, Amanpreet Kaur Sareen
Link to project

Candace Sun
Mentor: Brittany Johnson
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Hannah Milillo
Mentor: Jacob Davidson
Link to project

The Pygmalion tool can be used to create interactive visualizations of the meanings associated with a word, or vice versa of different words associated with similar concepts, to provide researchers, teachers, and learners with an instrument to visually represent the heterogeneous and complex information presented by dictionaries in a more intuitive way. The tool offers both interactive linear visualizations and network visualizations of a word, however, the interactivity and readability of these maps could be improved. Students will brainstorm ideas and design concepts to increase the interactivity of these visualizations and make them more user-friendly, as well as brainstorm ideas for the use of this tool in educational environments.

Outstanding Design Project
Fatema Motiwala, UMD
Pooja Gajera, UMD
Pratya Nellore, UMD
Shaunak Bhanarkar, UMD
Team: IC23025
Challenge: Pygmalion Tool Maps Design – University of Neuchâtel (Design)
Mentor: Dan Forest

Project Participants:

Fatema Motiwala, Pooja Gajera, Pratya Nellore, Shaunak Bhanarkar
Mentor: Dan Forest
Link to project

Vimbainashe Mabvaru, Runyararo Mucheche
Mentor: Dan Forest
Link to project

Controls to mitigate against cybersecurity attacks are an important component of an entity’s overall IT control environment. As such, it is increasingly important for external auditors to be aware of the risks that clients face because of poor or inadequate cybersecurity processes and controls. For this challenge, students will play the role of an external auditor for a public company, tasked with evaluating and testing internal controls. More specifically, students will evaluate and test passwords–a crucial component of access controls. Students will evaluate, perform, and document a series of steps as part of reviewing password management as a key Information Technology General Control (ITGC) and have the option to develop a system to automate the process.

Outstanding Cybersecurity Project
Ivan Bajceta, US Naval Academy
Michael Huizenga, US Naval Academy
Strahinja Janjusevic, US Naval Academy
Eric Liu, US Naval Academy
Team: IC23038
Challenge: Cybersecurity Controls: Audit, Automate, and Advise – EY (Cybersecurity)
Mentor: Fiona Knoll

This dataset, compiled by Yael Grauer, is a list of data brokers with steps for people to get their data removed. Each data broker is labeled if it is high priority, requires a driver’s license for removal, if the user must make their request via snail mail, or if the site charges for removal. There is also a free-text description of the removal process, usually including links. We are looking for ways to allow users to make informed decisions about how to proceed with getting their personal data out of these systems. Prioritizing a list by ease of the process (something challenge participants will have to rank based on multiple factors), urgency, number of steps, etc. would be useful, along with clear steps explaining what to do.

Project Participants:

Sai Divvela, Pranav Bonagiri, Danish Nadar, Itunuoluwa Ayo-Durojaiye
Mentor: Jimmy Alexis
Link to project

Jimmy Garcia, Quinn Carmack
Mentor: Kevin Barbian
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Min Cheong Kim, Luis Mayorga, Seshasai L
Mentor: Maddie Metcalfe
Link to project