For yet another year GMV has supported “IE Data Expedition 2017”, a datathon organized by the Big Data Club of the Spanish Business Institute (Club de Big Data del Instituto de Empresa: IE), not only sponsoring the event but also helping to organize it.

For two days the participants, mostly students of IE’s Big Data MSc, took on the challenge of solving a real business case for the Inter-American Development Bank (Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo: BID), doing so by analyzing data furnished by the bank itself. This analysis was to show how expert knowledge is spread throughout the various BID departments and the degree of collaboration between them. The teams were free to choose such tools as they thought fittest for the tasks in hand, although they were encouraged to use graph-based models.

GMV, on the strength of its vast data-analysis experience, was invited to collaborate in the event. Federico Sembolini, GMV Data Scientist, took part as mentor while José Carlos Baquero, division head and leader of GMV’s Big Data group, acted as a jury member. GMV is currently leading Big Data and Business Analytics initiatives in areas such as cybersecurity, fraud prevention, healthcare, Industry 4.0 and precision agriculture.

The IE is recognized as one of the world’s finest business schools. It offers the highest level of education and an international environment with students from all around the world. The competition attracted a very high technical level and turned out to be a very positive and enriching experience both for the event organizers and the participants.