Serveh Sharifi, Vanda Inacio, and Ozan Evkaya were on the organising committee for ASA DataFest – a weekend-long undergraduate data analysis competition where teams of 2-5 undergraduates work to reveal insights from a large and surprise dataset. On March 20-22, the School hosted the American Statistical Association DataFest at Edinburgh for the fifth time. The dataset for this year’s DataFest came from Stormont Vail Health, a nonprofit healthcare provider in Kansas, US, recognised for its quality care and extensive facilities, including acute care hospitals, clinics, and outpatient services.54 students from seven different schools across the University competed in 16 teams over the weekend to analyse data on healthcare encounters, and help Stormont Vail Health to better understand patient journeys within their system.This year, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries contributed as a sponsor alongside the American Statistical Association and the Centre for Statistics. Eight academic staff, postgraduate students, and data scientists from industry helped as consultants who analysed the dataset.The undergraduate teams presented their findings to a panel of judges, giving six-minute presentations identifying potential gaps in care, unnecessary procedures, and factors like transportation and home environments that influence healthcare access and outcomes.The ASA DataFest26@EDI Awards were announced at the end of the event on Sunday evening. Winners received certificates, prizes, and free memberships to the American Statistical Association and the Royal Statistical Society.The winners of ASA DataFest26@EDIBest Insight (joint award):Team 7 (Steve Hou, Zhihan Zhang, Yanchen Pan, Ruiqi Deng): "Explorations on Type 2 Diabetes Blood Test Frequencies"Team 'Byte me' (Ishildur Ulva Aadnedottir, Anna Gotto, Kumi Stevens): "Online Care for the Elderly"Best Visualisation:Team 16 (Alexis Jaszkowski, Anthea Wong, Dongming Sima): "A Journey Through Smoke"Best Use of Outside Data:Team 'Significant Figures' (Korbin Sharp, Jude Robinson, Harry Taylor, Harry English): "Potential Effects on Hospital Admission and Waiting Time"Honourable mentions for commendable work in insights and visualisation were awarded to:Team 'Command+V' (Qianhao Meng, Chenyi Shirley He, Veronica Xu, Jiahui Liu): "Bridging the Gap: Fixing the T2DM Patient Journey at SVH"Team 'Ctrl Alt Elite' (Theo Ellis-Morton, Tobias Andersen, Joseph Dunn, Theo Kidd, Harvey Allen)Team Shravan Mudduluru, Ishir Nama, Neslihan Arici: "SVH Patients Journey"Team 13 (Jieyu Ren, Jingxuan Han): "How to improve the care efficiency of Type-2 Diabetes patients"Thanks to Benjamin Cox (Postdoctoral Researcher at Max Planck Institute for Physics), Ian Sharpe (Actuary at the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries Scottish Board), Bruce Worton (Reader in Statistics at the School of Mathematics) and Katie Worton (Senior Software Engineer at CNIguard Ltd) for judging this year’s ASA DataFest@EDI. Learn more:What is DataFest? | ASA DataFest26@EDI Tags Statistics Student success Undergraduate Publication date 17 Apr, 2026
