aCAP, pro bono & Data Science Bowl

CAP news: INFORMS to launch associate program

INFORMS will launch an Associate Certified Analytics Professional (aCAP) program in 2016. Aimed at young professionals and career changers, the aCAP program allows individuals to apply for and take the CAP® exam and hold the aCAP designation until they’ve earned the requisite work experience to apply for the CAP credential.

If you’ve already earned CAP certification, you may be interested in serving as a CAP ambassador. INFORMS will soon provide CAP holders with information regarding the ambassador program and how you can help INFORMS increase the value and visibility of CAP certification.

For those interested in taking the CAP exam, INFORMS offers online, computer-based testing so you can test on your schedule, as well as paper-and-pencil exams at selected sites. To access any exam, you must first apply and be approved for the CAP examination. Eligible veterans can use their GI Bill to reimburse the exam fee.

For more information, visit: www.certifiedanalytics.org.

Who is a CAP? INFORMS recently queried its applicant pool (includes both CAP holders and those who have applied for certification) and came up with a snapshot illustrated by the following graphs:

INFORMS supports Data Science Bowl

INFORMS is once again a partner in the National Data Science Bowl, an online, three-month-long (ending March 14, 2016) competitive event sponsored by Booz Allen Hamilton and Kaggle. Held in conjunction with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (part of the National Institutes of Health), this year’s challenge is to develop an algorithm to empower doctors to more easily diagnose dangerous heart conditions and help advance the science of heart disease treatment.INFORMS supports Data Science Bowl

Declining cardiac function is a key indicator of heart disease. Doctors determine cardiac function by measuring end-systolic and end-diastolic volumes (i.e., the size of one chamber of the heart at the beginning and middle of each heartbeat), which are then used to derive the ejection fraction (EF). EF is the percentage of blood ejected from the left ventricle with each heartbeat. Both the volumes and the ejection fraction are predictive of heart disease.

While a number of technologies can measure volumes or EF, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is considered the gold standard test to accurately assess the heart’s squeezing ability.

The challenge with using MRI to measure cardiac volumes and derive ejection fraction, however, is that the process is manual and slow. A skilled cardiologist must analyze MRI scans to determine EF. The process can take up to 20 minutes to complete – time the cardiologist could be spending with his or her patients. Making this measurement process more efficient will enhance doctors’ ability to diagnose heart conditions early, and carries broad implications for advancing the science of heart disease treatment.

This year’s Data Science Bowl challenges individuals and teams to create an algorithm to automatically measure end-systolic and end-diastolic volumes in cardiac MRIs after examining MRI images from more than 1,000 patients. The data set was compiled by the National Institutes of Health and Children’s National Medical Center and is an order of magnitude larger than any cardiac MRI data set released previously. With it comes the opportunity for the data science community to take action to transform how to diagnose heart disease.

The competition offers an award of $200,000 to the winner. For more information, visit www.datasciencebowl.com/and watch the tutorial video (https://youtu.be/dFu_5T0ODrM)

INFORMS to launch ‘Pro Bono Analytics’ program

INFORMS, the leading professional association in analytics and operations research, recently announced it is launching a new initiative – “Pro Bono Analytics” – in an effort to connect analytics experts with non-profit organizations seeking to improve how they achieve greater results by leveraging data and information.

With the Pro Bono Analytics initiative, non-profit organizations have the opportunity to work with analytics professionals on a volunteer basis to help solve challenges and create new opportunities for success with the scientific process of transforming data into insight. The initiative matches INFORMS’ analytics professional volunteers with non-profit organizations that would benefit from advanced analytics and operations research training and techniques. By focusing on current analytics issues as they relate to non-profit organizations, the Pro Bono Analytics team will be able to take the necessary steps in assisting to solve the most complex of issues.