{"id":3652,"date":"2018-05-14T20:41:38","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T20:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/?p=3652"},"modified":"2018-05-14T20:41:38","modified_gmt":"2018-05-14T20:41:38","slug":"what-is-data-spark-and-why-you-should-take-part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/2018\/05\/14\/what-is-data-spark-and-why-you-should-take-part\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Data Spark and why you should take part"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"898\" height=\"480\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3654\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/files\/2018\/05\/Screen-Shot-2018-05-14-at-20.53.36.png\" alt=\"Data Spark\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Data Spark is a student placement scheme at Imperial designed to uncover insights and solve real-world business problems. It lasts around 6 weeks and you&#8217;re able to work with students from different study programs. Throughout this journey, you get great advice from academic and industry mentors.<\/p>\n<p>Having finalised the program last week, I wanted to share what I enjoyed the most:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Applying new skills<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of my favourite parts of this program was that I was able to apply several skills learned during my current study program (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imperial.ac.uk\/business-school\/programmes\/msc-business-analytics\/\">MSc Business Analytics<\/a>). I was able to run different models, work on network analysis and and apply several visualisation techniques. These models led to several interesting insights that were relevant for our client.<\/p>\n<p>This is now an example I can use to show the techniques I&#8217;ve learned and how I&#8217;ve applied them (very helpful when applying for jobs!).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mentorship<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My team and I had the great opportunity to work with Dr Rebecca Pope at KPMG as industry mentor and Dr David Birch as academic mentor. Their strong technical capabilities and consulting experience brought a lot of value to our team. We held weekly meetings that guided us on what technical analysis to perform and how to create a compelling story for our client. This was a unique experience to get close guidance on our work and ideas.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif\"><b>Team Work<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p>We were five team members with different backgrounds and skills. We had different views and angles to solve problems. This became a great opportunity to learn from each other.\u00a0 At the same time, we could start developing project management skills to make sure that our collective work was meeting the project&#8217;s goals.<\/p>\n<p>If you have any questions about the program, feel free to use the comments section below!<\/p>\n<p>You can also find more information about this program <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imperial.ac.uk\/business-school\/research\/imperial-business-analytics\/data-spark\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Data Spark is a student placement scheme at Imperial designed to uncover insights and solve real-world business problems. It lasts around 6 weeks and you&#8217;re able to work with students from different study programs. Throughout this journey, you get great advice from academic and industry mentors. Having finalised the program last week, I wanted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93861,92291,270193],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing-statistics","category-uni-life","category-work-experience"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What is Data Spark and why you should take part - Student blogs - Imperial College London<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/2018\/05\/14\/what-is-data-spark-and-why-you-should-take-part\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is Data Spark and why you should take part - Student blogs - Imperial College London\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&nbsp; Data Spark is a student placement scheme at Imperial designed to uncover insights and solve real-world business problems. 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