Creating a great laundry detergent is just the first step in conquering the household cleaning market.

That’s one of the concepts that UConn MSBAPM students learned during their capstone-class project last month. Their task? Providing data, customer insight, and e-commerce support to Henkel, which markets a wide range of well-known consumer and industrial brands in North America, including Persil®, Purex®, and all® laundry detergents and Snuggle® fabric softeners.

One capstone project involved creating competitive analysis and effective strategies for omnichannel branding, reviewing data to gain insights and recommend innovative areas to exploit sales. Another project addressed aggregation of data from e-commerce market places to help make business decisions and process efficiency.

“Partnering with UConn to advance the data analytics and tools for our eCommerce team was a great way to tap into local talents, fresh perspectives, and hopefully provide a great learning experience for the students,” said Laura Hyland, vice president of eCommerce for the company’s Laundry and Home Care division. “We are richer for it and look forward to adopting some of the work that the students completed.”

Alumna Yiyao Zhang, ’15 MSBAPM was also enthusiastic about the student contributions.

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For David Bergman, applying his knowledge and skills to the “cool math problem” of fantasy football has paid off – literally.
UConn School of Business professor David Bergman won $2.5 million this week in a fantasy football competition by using some of the data analytics knowledge and techniques he teaches students.

“I’m just shocked by the whole thing, but it’s very exciting,’’ says Bergman, who has been a faculty member in the operations and information management (OPIM) department for seven years. “I’ve played fantasy sports since I was in college and it’s such a fun hobby.’’

Bergman won a DraftKings Daily Fantasy Sports World Championship last weekend, selecting an entry that edged out 199 others chosen by top-ranked challengers. Participants select a collection of nine NFL players and try to outscore the other opponents’ picks. Bergman says part of his success was in selecting three players outside the typical tournament favorites, allowing him to distinguish his entry and rise through the ranks.
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For the second consecutive year, a team of UConn graduate students earned the first-place award in a national analytics competition. Their award-winning presentation addressed how a telecom company can analyze and utilize data to help retain existing customers.

The winning team included MSBAPM students Kamal Kannan Krishnan, Ayush Kumar and Namita Singh and MBA student Jimmy Joseph. They worked with OPIM Professor Jennifer Eigo over the summer to transform a class project into a poster submission for the JMP Discovery Summit, which was held virtually in mid-October.

Last year, two UConn teams tied for first place in the Summit, so this year’s win marks the second consecutive top prize for UConn.More Information

The excitement was palpable Monday night as 10 health care startups, including two that are UConn-grown, shared their medical technology innovations that promise unique solutions for some of medicine’s most vexing problems.
“Startups always talk about changing the world, but these companies will absolutely change lives,” said entrepreneurship expert Alex Farcet, who was among hundreds of people who packed The Bushnell theater.

The audience—composed of health care, business and economic development executives—cheered loudly for the startups, who had just completed a 12-week business accelerator program, sponsored by Hartford HealthCare, the UConn School of Business, Launch Hartford and Trinity College.

Many of the speakers at the event spoke passionately about how Hartford’s commitment to incubate innovative medical technology could bring lasting economic growth to the region.

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