From mapping malaria outbreaks to analyzing environmental health trends, University of Notre Dame students are using data to confront some of today’s most urgent health challenges.
The Health Data & Analytics Challenge (HDAC), launched in Fall 2024, empowers students to leverage real-world health data to identify access gaps and design practical strategies to improve community care. Co-hosted by the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society and the Berthiaume Institute for Precision Health and supported by the Bioengineering & Life Sciences Initiative, this year’s challenge received project submissions from over 50 undergraduate students representing a wide variety of majors at Notre Dame.
During the month-long challenge, graduate mentors guided students in refining research questions grounded in real-world datasets, including malaria incidence and vector-borne disease data, environmental health indicators, and IQVIA opioid prescription data.
In late February 2026, nine student teams presented their research findings to a panel of distinguished academia and industry judges. The teams were scored on methodology, question design, discussion of results, and evaluation of error or bias.
“As a data professional and a physician, it was exciting for me to see how adeptly the students worked with complex health datasets,” said Lynne Nowak, M.D., chief data and analytics officer for Surescripts. Nowak, who served as a judge for the challenge, added that, “Judging the final presentations gave me a front-row seat to their creativity and analytical skill — they impressed me with their ability to turn data into actionable insights that could make a real-world difference.”
The winning project, “Health vs. Wealth: A Housing First Strategy for Malaria Mitigation in Kenya,” presented by Patrick Duffy, ‘26; Daniel D’Alessio, 28’; and Austin Baron, 28’ used malaria incidence datasets to consider the extent to which structural vulnerabilities undermine the effectiveness of spatial repellents in driving both the speed and cumulative volume of malaria infections in Kenya.
“We participated in the Health Data and Analytics Challenge because of a shared desire to improve our data analysis skills on real datasets. Through our analysis of malaria incidence and housing vulnerability in Kenya, it was impactful to create an actionable recommendation that could help address a modern health issue. Our participation in the challenge was both an educational and meaningful experience,” said D’Alessio.
Two additional awards were presented, recognizing exceptional analysis of the provided data and for delivering the most compelling data story. The award for the best use of the datasets went to “Strategic Deployment of Spatial Repellents,” presented by Mason Gallo, ’26; Ben Herbst, ’26; Anesu Matara, ’26; and Kate Norman, ’26. The award for best data storytelling went to “From Risk to Resilience: AI-Driven Policies for Environmental Health Equity,” presented by Toni Akintola, ’26; Rachael Thumma, ’26; Aryan Patel, ’28; and Louis Cornett, ’26.
Reflecting on the experience, Cornett said, “This challenge gave us an opportunity to dive deep into real-world data, taking what we have learned in the classroom to fight for a healthier world. What was most impactful for us was the opportunity to chat with industry leaders about the efficacy of our solution in solving policy inefficiencies.”
Other judges included David Upjohn (ND 2012), cofounder and CTO at RXMapper; Cassandra Smiley, healthcare transformation & operations leader at Accenture; Ian Frost, senior advisor for The Boston Consulting Group; and Bharat Mishra, assistant professor of the practice in Genomics and Bioinformatics Core in the Department of Biological Science at Notre Dame.
The organizing committee for HDAC includes Donovan Leiva, research program manager for the Lucy Family Institute; Katie Liu, associate director of research programs for the Data, AI, and Computing Initiative; Prakash Nallathamby, associate director for the Berthiaume Institute; Keegan Wolohan, program manager and research associate for the Lucy Family Institute; and Siavash Ghorbany, Ph.D. candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering.
“Seeing students transform complex data into insights that promote wellness and tackle health disparities is inspiring. It’s exactly the brand of real-world problem-solving we strive to foster in the next generation of researchers,” said Nallathamby.
Echoing that sentiment, Liu highlighted the importance of giving students the space to explore their own questions through data.“One of our goals for the Challenge is to allow students an opportunity to follow their curiosities to generate their own research questions. It was amazing to see all of the different questions that these teams pursued and to hear them reflect on how harnessing data responsibly can lead to impact.”
For more information about the Health Data & Analytics Challenge, please visit the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society website.
Contact:
Christine Grashorn, Program Director, Engagement and Strategic Storytelling
Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society / University of Notre Dame
cgrashor@nd.edu / 574.631.4856
lucyinstitute.nd.edu / @lucy_institute
About the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society
Guided by Notre Dame’s Mission, the Lucy Family Institute adventurously collaborates on advancing data-driven and artificial intelligence (AI) convergence research, translational solutions, and education to ethically address society’s wicked problems. As an innovative nexus of academia, industry, and the public, the Institute also fosters data science and AI access to strengthen diverse and inclusive capacity building within communities.
About the Berthiaume Institute for Precision Health
The Berthiaume Institute for Precision Health at Notre Dame seeks to prevent and treat disease, promote wellness, and reduce health disparities by developing new tools to understand human variability at the molecular and cellular levels. Institute members conduct research into the molecular, cellular, and environmental factors underlying each person’s health, particularly those in underserved populations, and work to ensure new discoveries, data, and technologies benefit all populations.