Post by Jason Zhou

Over reading break this year, Ben, Mark, (Peter) and I had the privilege to participate in Citadel's 2021 Spring West Coast Datathon. Provided with a variety of COVID-19 related data, we were tasked with finding hidden trends in the transmission of the virus and provide insights that could help alleviate this pandemic. After a long week, I'm happy and humbled to say that our team won first place! Inspired by ongoing events, our analysis identified COVID vulnerable groups due to susceptibility to misinformation, and highlighted the vulnerabilities of different demographics towards different types of misinformation. This allowed us to make recommendations to policy makers on how craft specific approaches to vulnerable communities in order to better help them during this pandemic. More information about our experience can be found at the link below. I would like to thank Brett Parker and the entire organizational team at Citadel, Citadel Securities and Correlation One for making this incredible event happen under current circumstances. I can't wait to compete again with this amazing team at the Data Open Championship later this year!