FDU places second in HSI Battle of the Brains

A Fairleigh Dickinson University interdisciplinary team of Latino students from the Florham and Metropolitan Campuses finished as the runner-up in the inaugural Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) Battle of the Brains national competition. The event took place on Hopin, an online virtual events platform, October 14-17 with the competition portion spanning 24 hours.

The team won a $5,000 grant that will go to the University.

The competition was based on a business and technical case built around creating solutions to best implement learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Teams in the competition were provided coaching by Dell, Lyft, and Expedia. Twelve universities competed.

Students who competed in the HSI Battle of the Brains took part virtually via Hopin.

Teams had a maximum of eight members and could not receive help during the competition from advisors or anyone not on the the team. Team members were required to stay on camera in their session room while working on the project and show their process of arriving at their solution. Five teams advanced to the finals, where they presented their projects and answered challenging questions from the competition judges.

The FDU team was comprised of students majoring in either computer science or business.

Students who competed from the Metropolitan campus are: Katrina Janas, Erica Johnson, Ashley Kiczek, Ashley Lemus, Jhon Rodriguez, and Justin Rodriguez. Students who competed from the Florham Campus are: Hazel Cruz-Henriquez and Michael Martinez.

Several faculty served as advisors to the team. Avimanyou Vatsa served as advisor lead and registered representative at HSI Battle of the Brains. J. Daniel Wischnevsky, Neelu Sinha, Wenyun Dai, Eun-Jeong Ko, and Domenick Celentano advised students. Wischnevsky (Silberman College of Business), along with Alfredo Tan (Gildart Haase School of Computer Sciences and Engineering) and Laila Khreisat (Becton College) facilitated the cooperation of three academic units to bring together and support the talented cross-disciplinary FDU team.

To learn more visit https://hsibattleofthebrains.com.