Contest Sends Purdue Students to Convention

A group of graduate students from Purdue Polytechnic Institute is heading to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The Technology Leadership and Innovation students earned the trip by winning a data competition from software company SAP.

The SAP Project Dream Election 2015 competition saw teams use the company’s software to uncover insights from election data that could be used to draw better voter turnout, according to Purdue. Purdue’s team, the "Dynamite Data Diggers," analyzed the data to determine the most important issues for young and underrepresented voters in swing states.

"Big data is a huge challenge right now. There is so much data available, especially through social media, and top-performing organizations are using data mining techniques to turn raw data points into actionable insights," said team member Kirti Chintalapudi. "Using social media platforms for civic engagement is extremely powerful. We were amazed at how much interest we garnered to get people to vote in the competition. We could use that same approach to get the younger population to vote."

Four of the five team members will experience the convention July 25-28, participate in affiliated activities and attend the SAP "We the Future" summit. Purdue says the team will discuss the challenges of civil engagement in the digital world with members of the Democratic Future Forum at the summit.