Air Safety Institute (ASI) is devoted to improving the safety of pilots in the field of general aviation (GA) through industry-leading research. The fatal accidents affect everyone in the field deeply and the situation is calling for more analysis of the untapped accident report, the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) database.

Therefore, it is collaborating with MSBA students to analyze and determine causal factors for problematic phenomena in general aviation using Natural Language Processing. Leveraging descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive analysis, the student team helps ASI lower the KPI of this practicum which is the number of fatal accidents, by formulating operational and policy recommendations arising from the preceding analysis.

Store to Store Inventory Transfer to Improve Inventory Efficiency. When Machine Learning Meets Optimization (Phase 2) 

The objective of this project is to take the learnings from the optimization model in Phase one (completed last year) and continue to improve upon the logic to involve more parameters and data points as well as expand the scope to include Online Consumer demand and transfers back to regional distribution centers to support that demand. This project will enable students to apply their skills in a very challenging and critical area in the field of supply chain analytics.

Solving Complex Coordination Issues for Non-Emergency Medical Transport 

On this project students will look at the current predictive models against real data and retrain the models. Students will also develop a tool for dynamically analyzing the supply-demand balance in various regions, and a process to use that tool to adjust advertising budget to focus on areas that have more need for the allocated funds. 

The Asian Art Museum (AAM) is home to one of the world’s finest collection of Asian art with an expansive permanent collection and dynamic special exhibitions and public programs. AAM is currently undergoing a $90 million expansion project set to complete in 2020. The MSBA team is supporting AAM during this expansion by developing a statistical model to help predict attendance for special exhibitions, allowing the museum to better meet yearly earned revenue goals while maximizing public engagement with the museum’s art and cultural programs.

Based in San Francisco, Autodesk is a global leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software that helps people imagine, design, and create a better world.

Multiple MSBA student teams have worked with Autodesk’s data scientists, engineers, and business leaders. The first team examined how Autodesk can better engage with cloud customers throughout their subscription lifecycle. The second team analyzed the performance of key operational systems to improve performance and end-user experience. The third team worked with Autodesk’s product managers and data scientists on analytics to support customer success programs.  

BARCO Healthcare, is a multinational company headquartered in Kortrijk, Belgium. The student team is helping to analyze the data and workflow aspects of Multidisciplinary Tumor Board Meetings. Objectives include developing business analytics dashboards, measuring ROI and defining and capturing meeting efficiency KPIs. 

BlueMatrix is a leading platform for the authoring, distribution, and analysis of the consumption of financial research. It connects the world’s leading asset and wealth managers with nearly 1,000 research firms in more than 50 countries, in addition to serving internal teams across multinational corporations. Under the direction of the office of the CIO, MSBA students are analyzing fine-grain usage data from BlueMatrix's terabyte-scale SAAS platform. The goal is to analyze potential opportunities to create value for BlueMatrix's staff and customers and create robust predictive and search systems for financial-sector professionals using AI and advanced analytics.

Optimizing Agricultural Output at a California Farm

The project goal is to provide Bowles management with actionable intelligence on crop rotation to strategically optimize yields and revenues. As a companion to optimized crop rotation, the students are tasked with creating a risk management practice to robustly predict and minimize negative impacts of factors such as water allocations, market prices, and weather. The 11,000-acre Bowles Farm, where the company grows cotton, tomatoes, field crops, and specialty produce, is managed by the sixth generation of farm owners in California’s Central Valley.

Students tapped Internet-of-Things technology to explore real-time occupancy data with the goal of understanding how the workforce interacts with their office environment and how to influence productivity by improving space utilization. CBRE is the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm serving owners, investors and occupiers. Headquartered in San Francisco, McKesson Corporation—5th on the FORTUNE 500—is a global leader in healthcare supply chain management solutions, retail pharmacy, community oncology and specialty care and healthcare information technology.

Improving Management Effectiveness in Organizational Change 

The Challenge of changing a business is in the risk that its organization will not successfully adapt to the accompanying new demands. This project will give students invaluable experience and insight onto the organizational design industry. It will also require students to develop a demonstrable capability to use and coordinate predictive analytics, business user collaboration platforms, and management communications. 

Establishing a Commanding Presence in the Emerging Fleet Industry Market 

Students will get a first-hand view of how financial models and pricing information drive a successful business. They will work on pricing and discount analysis, revenue management, and various customer segmentation methods along with the ins and outs of the electric vehicle domain.  

The MSBA practicum team worked closely with the Analytics & Business Insight organization to build an interactive, self-service dashboard that provides a state-of-the-business view of key metrics for Charles Schwab. 

The COPA Data Initiative team is responsible for optimizing the current search engine for the COPA online forum by developing a content scoring system. The focus is on improving the user experience by providing weighted search results with the help of Natural Language Processing. This would involve developing KPIs to determine the improvement of the search functionality after the implementation of the model. On the administrative side, the COPA team aims to provide a dashboard to monitor site performance through custom metrics.

DHCS Health Informatics 

Working with the DHCS team will give students invaluable experience and insight into the California health services programs. Students will get an in-depth insight into the collection, analysis, management, and dissemination of quality data and data products for programs to make sound, data-driven decisions supporting program needs and requirements regarding health care in California. 

The student team worked with augmenting industry pricing and analytics experts tasked with improving profitability at a large California grocery chain by leveraging point-of-service and pricing data that capture how internal and external price signals impact customer behavior. Dunnhumby uses the power of customer (big) data and insights to create customer-first and personalized in-store, digital and mobile customer experiences.

Leveraging data science and AI-powered software, Engage3 helps retailers and brands enhance their performance through localized competitive intelligence and optimized pricing strategies.

Soda, Scorecards and Discounts - Optimal Pricing at Engage 3 

On this project students will dig deep into large, real-world data sets and understand consumer behavior from both the consumer and retailer perspective. In addition to opportunities to implement descriptive analytics, this project offers a rich test bed to improve students forecasting (prescriptive analytics) skill set. 

Managing Profitability Leakage in Enterprise Sales

Students are working with the Hilti finance team to determine a fair market pricing model based on customer segmentation and revenue potential. The goal is to form fundamental guidelines around pricing based on statistical analysis of Hilti’s current sales data combined with an understanding of business processes. Hilti is a global leader in providing technology-leading products, software and services to the worldwide construction industry through quality, innovation and direct customer relationships.

Innovative Business Models for California’s Electric Vehicle Infrastructure

The plug-in electric vehicle market is growing quickly in California, with 1.2-1.5 million vehicles expected on our roads by 2025 and 5 million by 2030. Public charging is critical for drivers who need more range, don’t have home charging, have slow chargers, or travel longer distances. The students are analyzing charging event data in collaboration with ITS-Davis researchers to design sustainable business models and capacity expansion strategies for charging station providers. ITS-Davis is the leading university center in the world on sustainable transportation, hosting the National Center on Sustainable Transportation since 2013 and managing major research initiatives on energy, environmental, and social issues.

Kiva is an international nonprofit, founded in 2005 in San Francisco, with a mission to help the more than 1.7 billion unbanked around the world who cannot access much-needed financial services. MSBA students are developing analytical insights and models to enable Kiva to grow the value and use of its programs. Specifically, they are employing data science to understand how to increase uptake and stickiness, which product and marketing features provide greatest value to users, and how to position different lending products to maximize impact.

UC Davis’s Koret Shelter Medicine Program aims to help shelters increase the number of animals they are able to process without wasting resources and while providing these animals with the best possible outcome for their situation. Working closely with the UC Davis Graduate School of Management professor Dr. David Woodruff, this practicum team is augmenting the mathematical optimization model through analytics tools. Using both data from existing animal shelters and simulating realistic data, we aim to build a robust unsupervised classification model through Machine Learning. In the meantime, the team is implementing the optimization model into a website hosted on AWS. With functions such as displaying personalized visualizations of analysis based on input data and giving suggestions using the optimization model, this website helps shelters manage their capacity.

Forecasting the Future: KQED's Broadcast & Membership Evolution 

Students will perform an in-depth analysis of KQED's members with respect to their age and historical giving, including channels by which they give (direct mail, digital, and on-air pledge). While working on this project, students will gain deep skills in data analytics, modeling and consumer trends.

Fourth-Grade Math and Markov Chains: The Little Chatbot That Could 

This project is something completely different. Students will work with the conversational AI startup to build a chatbot which will take the best instruction from the best math teachers and make it available to students worldwide. 

Omni-channel Merchandising at Fashion Retailer

Optimizing the product assortment at nearly 250 retail locations and integrating the in-store customer experience with its rapidly expanding e-commerce channel is key to Lucky Brand’s profit strategy. This multi-dimensional project gives students exposure to the company’s different organizational processes including demand management, facility planning, and merchandising. Founded in 1990 in Los Angeles, Lucky is an iconic American lifestyle brand specializing in denim.

The Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts is a performance venue situated on the UC Davis campus, hosting 70+ shows each season.

Customer Engagement in Performing Arts 

Students will create dashboards to track customer sentiment surveys and email marketing metrics. The dashboards will help the marketing team understand the effectiveness of various email campaigns and how different audience clusters respond to offers. 

The student team assisted a customer-centric, locally-owned grocery chain evaluate its marketing analytics strategy and delivering insights that maximize promotional impact and strengthen the customer relationship. Based in Woodland, Calif., Nugget Markets is a privately owned, $300+ mil. revenue grocery chain ranked 12 consecutive years among Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For.

Packsize is among a very few companies worldwide creating “right-sized packaging” – shipping packages that are optimally sized to the dimensions of their contents - through its hardware and software solutions. Its products have an enormous environmental impact, reducing the use of corrugated fiberboard as well as fill materials like polystyrene, as well as shipping costs and damage. MSBA students are applying analytics to design next-generation automation solutions that combine image acquisition from state-of-the-art stereoscopic cameras with Packsize's existing packaging and fulfillment solutions for a fast-expanding e-commerce sector.

The PeopleFun Practicum team will use exploratory data analysis, clustering, and other advanced data science practices to better understand the gamers, enhance revenue, and increase gamer retention this premier game studio. PeopleFun created Wordscapes and Word Stacks, which are the #1 and #2 word games on the Google and Apple stores.

The analysis draws insights from 20 TB of game player data for 570,000+ users. Founded in 2011 by the former leadership of Ensemble Studios, PeopleFun prides itself on its highly talented development team, creativity, rapid prototyping, teamwork and fun. Over 25 million monthly active users play PeopleFun’s games.

Established in 1972, Public Storage is the world’s leading self-storage company. A part of the Fortune 500 (NYSE: PSA), Public Storage owns and operates 2500+ facilities across 38 states; we employ thousands of associates across the United States. Public Storage believes that analyzing and improving digital customer engagement is a critical differentiator that we can use to create even more customer value. To that end, the goal of the MSBA project is to develop a full-stack analytics implementation focused on eCommerce analytics.

Future of Computing Devices 

Qualcomm's Snapdragon compute platform brings the best of your smartphones together with the best of your laptop. Students on this project will dive deep into the ever-growing Compute market and analyze consumer needs, changing market demands and rapidly growing technological advancements to provide business insights to Qualcomm. 

Part of SoftBank’s worldwide portfolio of companies revolutionizing business and commerce with cutting-edge technology, REEF transforms underutilized urban spaces into neighborhood hubs that connect people to locally curated goods, services, and experiences. REEF is the largest operator of mobility, logistics hubs, and neighborhood kitchens in the United States, Canada, and has a growing presence in Europe. Partnering with the MSBA program allows REEF to pair its rich data infrastructure with cutting-edge decision technologies and enthusiastic young talent from UC Davis to boost its workforce management systems and outcomes.