Students represent UTRGV in national problem-solving competition

UTRGV students had the opportunity to compete in a national problem-solving challenge and network with representatives of several big companies during the Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Battle of the Brains last month.

Hispanic-Serving Institution Battle of the Brains serves as an HSI academic national championship and experiential diversity recruiting showcase of top Latinx talent from colleges and universities across the country, according to its website. The national competition took place from March 7 to 13 in Austin.

The UTRGV team competed against 10 other Hispanic-serving institutions across the country. The teams had 24 hours to create a solution to a problem given by KPMG, the sponsor of the competition.

Mechanical engineering junior Marisol Ortiz, mechanical engineering junior Antonio Medina, computer science graduate student S M Sarwar, applied statistics and data science graduate student Stephanie Flores and  entrepreneurship and innovation senior Ximena Sandoval were part of the UTRGV team.

Sarwar said competition allows them to collaborate with different companies.

“Battle of the Brains is a 24-hour competition; it’s one kind of hackathon,” he said. “Besides this competition, we participated [in] some company engagement [with] the sponsors of Battle of the Brains … Amazon, Dell, Expedia group.”

The national competition is a collaborative process where students and employees have the opportunity to interact. At the same time, it is a challenge in real time to seek solutions to real-life problems.

Sandoval said during the 24-hour competition, the team had to come up with a solution for that problem.

“In the 24-hour competition, as I mentioned, KPMG, which is one of the biggest four accounting firms, was the main sponsor,” she said. “So, we were provided [with] a problem that currently KPMG is going through.”

Sarwar said that the problem they had to solve was focused on reducing the carbon emission to zero.

“The problem was [that] KPMG emits about KPMG bond point 85% carbon emission for their … employee transportation,” he said. “That transportation is basically [in the] intercity [of] a metropolitan area. So KPMG wanted to reduce the carbon emission to zero. That’s the main theme of their problem.”

The group of students had to create different plans for the solution.

“We had to submit several deliverables,” Sandoval said. “We had to submit a business plan, like, what was going to be our solution and how is the business going to implement it. We had to submit whatever our solution was. We

had to submit, like, an app or some sort of software to go with our solution. And at the end of it, all we had to do is come up with a presentation.”

Sandoval also said she had the opportunity to interact with different companies and learn about the opportunities they offer.

“KPMG was there, Dell was there, Amazon [and] representatives from all these companies were there,” she said. “They were there to talk to students and talk about the opportunities they had for students, especially for us as Hispanics.”

Sandoval said her experience in the competition was eye opening.

“I got to work with people from other majors,” she said. “It was, like, a real-world experience. You get a challenge and you have to work with other people that maybe you didn’t know before or, like, that are experts in other areas.”

The three finalists received scholarship prizes. First place received $25,000; second place, $15,000; and third place, $10,000.