Addition Financial Analytics Competition Winners Announced

A team of two Knights takes home the grand prize at the Big Data Analytics Symposium

By: Emily Dougherty | March 28, 2025

The UCF Department of Statistics and Data Science collaborated with Pegasus Partner, Addition Financial, to host its annual analytics competition and named its winners at the Big Data Analytics Symposium, hosted at UCF this past month. 

The Big Data Analytics Symposium is a day-long series of speakers and networking opportunities hosted at UCF, connecting students to industry professionals to explore the practical applications of big data and data analytics in the modern marketplace. This year’s sponsors included Addition Financial, Voloridge, Intego Group, Playfair Data. And the UCF College of Business.

Vice President of Research and Innovation Winston Schoenfeld, Ph.D., welcomed attendees to the event.

“This event serves as more than just a learning opportunity—it is a gateway to real-world applications and career opportunities,” says Schoenfeld. “The presentations, networking sessions, and discussions you participate in today may spark new ideas, forge valuable connections, and even lead to your next big career move.”

A unique valuable learning opportunity is through the Additional Financial Analytics Competition. UCF student participants apply their education to a real-world problem, analyzing real-world data to gain actionable insights into the factors influencing consumer decisions when choosing financial institutions for mortgage loans.

The winning team, comprised of Jackson Windhorst, a senior studying data science, and Katelyn Choudhari, a data science major and statistics minor, presented their research and findings to the room of attendees, which included industry partners, faculty, and fellow students. They were recognized, along with the second and third-place winners, by Addition Financial at the event.

Along with the winners, other fellow Knights studying data science, had big wins too. Kyle Brinker came in second place and Aamogh Sawant, Colin Montie, Nathaniel Wright came in third place as a team in the competition.

The winning UCF College of Science students were recognized at the Big Data Analytics Symposium on March 24 in a special presentation led by Sital Nayee, Systems Analyst at Addition Financial. Nayee’s enthusiasm for data science extends into personal projects and continuous learning endeavors, in particular, this annual competition.

“We wanted students to have a compelling question and have the opportunity to research publicly available data to discover solutions. This is a real-time opportunity for both Addition Financial and the students who participated in the competition,” says Nayee. “We were impressed with the winning team—the depth of research they conducted and insights are actionable for our business operations.”

As the winning team, Choudhari and Windhorst had an opportunity to present their findings centered around the question: What causes consumers to choose one financial institution over another for their loans/mortgages?

In their presentation, they explored the reasoning behind why people choose specifics banks for financing. By utilizing different data sets and research methods, Windhorst and Choudhari were able to come to five causes: accessibility and convenience, significance of financial terms, reputation and trust, competitive and transparent rates and fees, and regional economic factors.

Through the top five causes, they both were able to generate suggested actions that Addition Financial can focus on in their business operations to aid consumers in decision making.

Choudhari shares what it means to her to have the opportunity to show her team’s hard work.

“It was fun to showcase our project at the Symposium. It felt great to share what we’d worked so hard on and to connect with both students and professionals in the field,” she says.

Winning the Addition Financial Analytics Competition came as a surprise to Windhorst; he shares that he took on this competition to further his professional experience.

“It feels shocking since I did not expect to win. I was initially doing this project for my resume to show recruiters how I had grown from this project,” Windhorst says.

The pair’s road to victory was a learning journey. Choudhari says it taught her more about the value of collaboration and communication.

“Jackson and I communicated regularly over Discord and divided up the work based on our strengths,” she says. “We’d check in with each other to go over what we completed, talk through what did and didn’t work, and compared our findings to build our final conclusions.”

Through this experience Windhorst says that he learned a lot about data through real world experience.

“The biggest lesson I learned was that the data in the real world is not always going to be in ideal shape,” Windhorst says. “There will be a lot of unformatted entries, and errors. This is why it’s the data scientist’s job to clean up the data to the best of their ability.”

Choudhari says she’s glad she’s been able to grow her experience and knowledge in a unique way through the Addition Financial Analytics Competition.

“This experience really boosted my confidence and showed me that I can take on complex, real-world data problems,” Choudhari says. “It’s been a great reminder that learning doesn’t stop in the classroom.”

For fellow Knights who are interested in taking part in this competition, Windhorst shares his advice.

“For anyone thinking about entering the competition for next year, don’t think about it, just do it,” he says. “No matter what you do, if you put effort in you may just surprise yourself.”