For the inaugural Challenge, 29 QTEM students from 11 universities around the globe participated from February to May 2018. The students were grouped in multicultural teams of 3 participants and worked together remotely on real data from AB InBev – the largest beer company in the world – or the European Commission.

AB InBev was a key partner for the first challenge. Twenty QTEM master students used advanced analytical techniques to forecast beer sales but also proposed new approaches. For example, one of the teams designed an application which analyzed “feelings” behind posts on social networks as a possible indicator of sales.

Nine QTEM students chose to participate in the second challenge on data from over 2 million Erasmus exchanges. They had to use analytics to understand and improve student’s mobility experience. Creativity was at the center of this challenge. The teams came up with interactive maps showing Erasmus flows, econometric models to explain such flows and new indicators to measure the gains from Erasmus experience.