DSU program boosts equitable access to data science industries
Delaware State University is continuing its partnership in the FICO Educational Analytics Challenge to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in data science.
Created for students at historically Black colleges and universities, the semester-long program features remote mentoring from FICO’s data scientists and in-person lectures by Dr. Scott Zoldi, FICO’s chief analytics officer.
Developed with DSU professors and FICO data scientists, the program equips students with the tools to tackle real-life data challenges. By partnering with HBCUs, FICO is creating more equitable access to data-science industries and ultimately taking a step to combat bias in technologies such as AI.
For the 2024-25 school year, the real-world analytics challenge will focus on financial fraud detection, helping students identify anomalies and fraud features leveraged in a real-time fraud detection model. Students will learn how responsible AI techniques are crucial to protect and safely advance analytic practices.
“Diverse viewpoints and voices are necessary to develop any AI that is unbiased. FICO is doing something to address that need and working directly with students at HBCUs to encourage a more diverse future of data scientists. The Educational Analytics Challenge program not only empowers students to get a real-world experience with data analytics, but also to learn the fundamentals of building responsible, auditable and ethical AI models to protect and safely advance AI practices for future generations,” said Zoldi.
Following the successful 2023-24 FICO Educational Analytics Challenge program year, students will turn their attention to a new set of challenges focused on AI, analytics and financial fraud detection.
As part of this year’s program, students will be tasked with joining the fight against transaction fraud. Criminals today often commit financial fraud by mimicking legitimate banking behavior to secure billions in customer funds, and banks need to leverage real-time behavioral analytics and machine learning models to identify and prevent fraud. Participants will use transactional behavior analytics to design and build their own real-time fraud detection models to identify anomalies and suspicious banking activity. Their models should be capable of being operationalized in the fight against fraud.
Continuing its work with Delaware State University and Bowie State University, FICO is bringing the program to students at Morehouse College this semester. Additional HBCU schools will participate in the spring semester starting in January 2025 as the program expands from its pilot phase.
