Mount Holyoke takes home the DataFest trophy for the first time

At the 2025 ASA Five College DataFest on April 6th, the Yokies from Mount Holyoke College won the Best in Show prize, bringing the trophy to South Hadley for the first time.

The Yokies got the nod over fellow Best in Group winners from Smith College and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Two teams from Amherst College also took home awards (see below).

In all, 33 teams presented on Sunday, (most likely) equaling or surpassing the previous Five College record. 194 students from across the Five College registered for the event, and at least 121 students attend the reveal on Friday night.

Congratulations to all the participants and to all the winners, who will receive a complimentary one-year membership in the American Statistical Association.

We’ll see you next year!

Best in Show and Best in Group (Panel C)

Yokies: Fannie Fouron, Kate Khe Hoang, Linh Nguyen, Jade Pham (Mount Holyoke College)

Best in Group (Panel A)

Epic Sauce: Victor Chen, Aarav Nair, Joshua O’Brien, Samantha Sheedy, Vin Tyagi (UMass)

Best in Group (Panel B)

Data Wranglers: Itzel Aleman Flores, Danielle Justo, Zoe Khan (Smith College)

Best Employee Perspective

Random Forest Rangers: Casey Crary, Kevin Dai, Reihaneh Iranmanesh, Sarah Wu (Amherst College)

Most Compelling Problem Statement

RAS: Anirudh Arunachalam, Rizma Shaikh, Siddharth Vasudevan (UMass)

Best User Focus

Data Matcha: Maya Balaban, Mari Cornwall-Brady, Tiantian Hao, Selena Luo, Omshreya Swain (UMass)

Best Use of External Data

PyRates: Liam Davis, Thu Hoang, Ryan Ji, Yichen Liu, Dhyey Mavani (Amherst College)

Best Visualization

Royal Chicken Club: Shally Albert, Sudikshya Gurung, Jennifer Ye (UMass)