Deakin Business School students won a free trip to Las Vegas.

Deakin University team, Nakul Bajaj, Robyn Abel, Scott Burden and their coach Dr William Yeoh were recently named Worldwide Champion at the 2016 IBM Watson Analytics Global Competition held in late-October at the IBM World of Watson Conference in Las Vegas which attracted 17,000 attendees from 102 countries.

Battling it out against over 125 teams from universities around the globe, Deakin’s Business Analytics team took home the World Champion title for their “Air Quality: Towards a Better Future” project – after proving their analytics knowledge and prowess through interactive analytics dashboards, visualisations, predictive modelling and social media analytics in relation to improve understanding and action on air quality from the community level through to global policy decision-makers.

Dr Yeoh said that this result explicitly indicates that Deakin Business School is a leading world-class education provider in the business analytics discipline. ‘Our curricula are informed by advice from experienced analytics professionals, and our students are equipped with practical analytics skills to solve real-world problems,’ he remarks.

While a wonderful opportunity for the team to explore their talents and compete against students from around the world, the team also had the chance to meet and connect with analytics stakeholders. ‘The experience to get there on the world stage and winning in front of audience of all IBM employees, partners and clients was a dream come true. We spent an hour after the announcement with some IBM senior executives and shared a breakfast table next day with them as well. I got to connect with these people personally and also connected with them on LinkedIn,’ team member, Nakul Bajaj explains.

A group photo with the finalists from Canada and Slovenia

If you’re interested in studying at Deakin University, Business Analytics is offered as a major in Deakin's Bachelor of Commerce, and at postgraduate level, Deakin's Master of Business Analytics –the first analytics master program accredited by Australian Computer Society (ACS). For more information, click here.