For several years, health care company Anthem Inc. has turned to seniors in Virginia Tech’s computational modeling and data analytics program (CMDA) – through its capstone course – to generate answers for some of the biggest issues plaguing the world today.
Most recently, Anthem sponsored a project investigating how vaccination rates and attitudes about vaccinations are affecting infection rates of COVID-19 and hospitalizations in the Commonwealth of Virginia. According to Dale Wood, staff vice president for strategy and analytics at Anthem, the company plans to use the project completed by its student team as a baseline for a nationwide study.
“It’s amazing what these students can do with taking data and turning it into information,” said Wood. “They’re building a story around it. It’s very valuable to us to understand the new techniques the students are learning through the program and applying it back into the business world.”
CMDA, nested within the Academy of Data Science in the College of Science, combines skills in mathematics, statistics, and computer science to teach techniques at the forefront of computational problem solving. The curriculum design team believed a capstone experience, long a staple of engineering majors, should be an essential aspect of data science education, and the CMDA capstone was first offered in 2016.
An intensive, semester-long course that pairs students with industry partners to tackle real problems, the capstone features teams of three or four students who spend the duration of the course working on an open-ended, client-driven project.
In addition to the technical aspects of the project, students are mentored in teamwork, project management, professional conduct, and technical leadership. Within their projects, they also consider the ethical aspects of data science and mathematical modeling.
Anthem has been a long-time sponsor of the CMDA capstone projects, with several former CMDA students going on to earn internships or even roles as full-time associates at Anthem.
“We started with the program probably the first or second year the CMDA program was around, and the quality and the number of students have grown exponentially every year,” said Wood. “The students are getting better at understanding the techniques of data science, statistics, and application to business, and they’re well-prepared for being consultants in the world and working in the business world.”
