Romania ranked sixth globally in the Datathon Challenge "Equity in Healthcare" competition

Romania ranked sixth globally in the Datathon Challenge "Equity in Healthcare" competition, held under the "Women in Data Science" (WiDS) brand, an annual international competition launched by Stanford University.

Cristina Daniela Nicolaescu, a representative of the OMV Petrom financial team, competed with over 1,600 Data Science experts from more than 100 countries to secure the spot for Romania.

The global competition was organized as part of the fourth edition of WiDS Romania 2024, supported by the Think Tank 360 organization, together with Wolters Kluwer Romania, in partnership with Stanford University.

"For the first time in the three years since participating in the Datathon, the Romanian team ranked sixth. We are very proud of our Romanian participants and the remarkable contributions of WiDS Romania, both nationally and globally," said Margot Gerritsen, Professor Emerita at Stanford and Executive Director of WiDS Worldwide.

Cristina Daniela Nicolaescu, 57, specialized in Data Science only in recent years. An engineer by training, she joined the financial team of OMV Petrom in 2016 and gradually developed a passion for Data Science.

"Nobody knows what the future holds. Therefore, I believe that our responsibility is to look at what is likely to happen and prepare for it. One of the possible ways to do this is to befriend Data Science. Moreover, I believe that in the 21st century, we have an unprecedented opportunity to free up our time using data science or, in general, technological tools, to spend more time with our families," Nicolaescu said.

In addition to Cristina Nicolaescu's performance, OMV Petrom secured four more of the top ten places in the national ranking. This ranking was compiled by experts from Stanford University, after analyzing all the projects of the participating teams globally.

"This contest changes destinies, national policies, mindsets, reshapes personalities, and creates a new generation, doing in a shorter time what organically could take many years to happen!" stated Mariana Ungureanu, WiDS Ambassador for Romania and founder of the Think Tank 360.

The 2024 Datathon Challenge "Equity in Healthcare" began on January 9 and concluded on March 1. Participants focused on developing methods to determine a correct diagnosis of patients within a shorter period than 90 days. They analyzed 39,000 patient records, from details such as age, race, body mass index (BMI), and specific demographic information of the residence area (such as income, education level, rent, racial distribution, and poverty index) to data about the air quality in the area (ozone concentrations, PM2.5, and NO2).

Additionally, the dataset included specific information about the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, such as diagnostic codes for breast and metastatic cancer, and the treatments applied for metastatic cancer. Participants had the task of designing and implementing algorithms that use these data to make accurate predictions.