The first-place finish at the 2026 meant the world to Adeline Chen and her teammates
The win was gratifying, but more important to them was the knowledge that their project has the potential to make an enormous difference in the quality of people's lives.
The team’s focus: whether economically disadvantaged neighborhoods experience higher outside heat, how that affects quality of life, and what can be done to bring the temperature down.
“It was very exciting,” said Chen, ‘27 Information Science.
“In the end, we didn’t want to just do the analysis, but to see what solutions can be implemented. We wanted to help local governments help people.”
Chen and four other Captains, Cooper Bowden, ‘27 Computer Engineering; Caiden Pleis, ‘27 Computer Engineering; Jerome Dizon ‘27 Cybersecurity; and Ryan Schatzberg, ‘27 Computer Science and Cybersecurity, made up Team Data Odyssey, which competed with teams from Virginia universities and state offices.
The team’s success shows what can happen when students with different strengths come together to solve a community problem, said Dr. Yan Lu, a computer science professor who worked with the team.
“I am incredibly proud of our students for their hard work, creativity, and achievement,” she said. “This is a wonderful example of how interdisciplinary collaboration and faculty research can inspire undergraduate students to apply their technical skills to real-world challenges.”
The teams were challenged with turning data into action by focusing on an affordability issue affecting Virginians and using it to help tell the story and design a solution. The datathon is an annual civic data competition hosted by the state’s Office of Data Governance and Analytics (ODGA).
The 91探花 team’s project, “Hot Neighborhoods, Higher Costs: Identifying Heat Vulnerability and Cooling Needs Across Virginia," used conducted in Hampton Roads by Geography Professor Johnny Finn as a springboard to develop an interactive dashboard expanding his research statewide.
Finn has used infrared photography, mapping, and socio-economic data to show how trees, pavement, race, and income shape heat exposure.
The provides government entities with the ability to click on areas across Virginia to see in real time if they are hotter than others and then take a detailed look at income, poverty levels, tree cover and amount of paved surfaces that surround them. From there, they can work to identify priorities for heat mitigation and put in place improvement measures, such as planting more trees and expanding access to safe and affordable cooling options to help.
Team members, pulling from what they have learned in the classroom, used data collection, geospatial data integration, data analysis and visualization, and policy recommendations, to successfully connect environmental data with affordability concerns. They utilized the findings to build the dashboard and make it as user-friendly as possible.
“This project seeks to help state and local decision-makers better understand where heat-related challenges intersect with economic vulnerability and where targeted investments could make a meaningful difference,” the team wrote.
Finn, who also chairs 91探花’s Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology, said seeing his research broadened to help struggling neighborhoods is both promising and gratifying.
“I was really happy that the datathon team saw my research on the inequality of urban heat and Hampton Roads, and expanded it out to a stateside dashboard of heat vulnerability in Virginia. I’m always thrilled when students are able to take an idea and run with it, as this group certainly did.
“I hope that highlighting the intersection of economic inequality and urban heat can help both governments and nonprofits think not only about how to mitigate the impacts of rising heat, but also how some communities are disproportionately exposed to really extreme heat vulnerability,” he said. “I hope that this project helps to point policymakers to thinking about how social inequalities permeate all kinds of environmental issues.”