The annual Bronx Summit on Technology Innovation and Start Ups explores the opportunities and challenges underlying the Bronx’s potential for technology-based innovation and startup activity. Sponsored by the Center for Digital Transformation, the summit—which is now in its fourth year—focuses on leveraging existing resources in the borough to promote economic development.

“Through these conferences, we want to build up the skills and the knowledge base we already have here to promote economic and technological development… and make it attractive for entrepreneurial and business activities.”

The summit is free and open to the public, but RSVP is required.

This year’s theme, “Opportunistic Growth for the Bronx in Technology: Next Step—Is the Bronx Up to the Challenge?”, pays special attention to health care technology. Speakers and panelists will discuss innovative solutions such as hosting health hackathons in which students and other programmers collaborate on building mobile applications.

Examples of what could arise from a health hackathon are remote monitoring for diabetics and “telemedicine” web conferencing for doctors and patients, Raghupathi said. But first the borough must tap into the brainpower within its borders.

“We have all these institutions, colleges, and this support from the borough president’s office as well as private entities,” he said, referencing Bronx Community College, St. Barnabas and Montefiore hospitals, the Bronx Science Consortium, and the South Bronx Development Corporation, among others. “We felt that we needed to act as an interface among these various stakeholders.”

Fordham presenters include Rosemary Wakeman, PhD, director of the urban studies program; Nisha Mistry, director of the Urban Law Center; and Carey Weiss, sustainability initiatives coordinator for the Social Innovation Collaboratory.

The summit is co-sponsored by Fordham’s urban studies program, the Urban Law Center, and the Bronx Technology Innovation Coalition (BITC).

For more information, contact Raghupathi or Center for Digital Transformation senior fellow Teresita Abay-Krueger.

Of course, the Fordham analytics students could have told you that weeks ago.

On March 27, students from across the University faced off in the final round of March Data Crunch Madness, an NCAA analytics competition sponsored by Fordham’s Center for Digital Transformation, the Business Analytics Society, and Deloitte.

The event was the culmination of a month of data-crunching for the sixteen teams of graduate and undergraduate students. Starting in February, each team had one week to analyze historical data from past NCAA tournaments, then another two weeks to analyze the current season’s data. The last step was to present their results to a panel of judges.

“When I saw the reports I was stunned,” said “R.P” Raghupathi, PhD, director of the business analytics program at the Gabelli School of Business.

“Many of the international students had never even heard of March Madness. Yet they were able to grasp this very complex domain and use March Madness language. That’s important, because ultimately when they go for job interviews they’ll need to relate to perspective employers using the companies’ terminology.”

One way to arrive at a prediction was through a “logistic regression” model, said Team Data Whiz—one of only two teams to be made up entirely of undergraduates. Using the mathematical model, the group calculated each NCAA team’s chances of winning and then tested the accuracy of their model using data from past seasons.

Once they determined the model was a reliable, they applied it to the current season to make their predictions.

“It’s sort of like grading—we’re basically grading the sports teams and figuring out how they would do against each other,” said graduate student Travis Petersen, an officer in the Business Analytics Society and organizer of the competition.

“Whenever you’re predicting something as unpredictable as a sports event, there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s more about trying to minimize your uncertainty.”

The teams were evaluated based on their poster presentations, methodology, and results. First, second, and third-place prizes were awarded by a panel of judges comprised of Petersen, two Fordham faculty members, and two representatives from Deloitte.

The overwhelming majority of teams were spot-on in their predictions, which made for a formidable judging process, Petersen said. To illustrate, he showed the group two graphs comparing the Fordham students’ predictions with those of renowned statistician Nate Silver.

“Your predictions lined up almost exactly with Silver’s predictions,” Petersen told the students during the tense moments before the winners were announced. “That goes to show the quality of your submissions. You guys are picking in line with the universal expert in the field.”

Ultimately, Raghupathi said, the competition’s greatest payoff was the opportunity for students to test their analytic abilities in a real-life situation.

“It allows students to apply their skills to this big data set and very quickly build a model, test it, and then present quantitative data in a way that the judges will understand,” he said.

The winners were:

• First Place: Team Coach K (Xiayu Zeng; Feifei Chen; Yi Chun Chien; and Ziaoshan Jin)
• Second Place: Team Explorer (Dan Luo, Shenglei Zhao, Tianmiao Zhou, and Linsheng Shen)
• Third Place: Team Fab 5 (George Kernochan, Marcello Fortunato, Sal Cocciaro, and Sanjary Pothula)

Those challenges were laid out at “Technology Start-Ups in the Bronx: Opportunities and Challenges,” a summit held at the Gabelli School of Business on Oct. 17.

The conference, which was sponsored by the Fordham Schools of Business and the Center for Digital Transformation, brought together leaders in technology, business, education and government, as well as community members and students, to address what the Bronx has—and what it lacks—that technology start-ups need.

Steven D’Agustino, Ph.D, director of Fordham’s RETC Center for Professional Development, laid bare the economic realities that need to be overcome. Approximately 16 percent of Bronx residents live on less than $10,000 a year, 25 percent don’t speak fluent English, and 31 percent over age 25 have not earned a high school diploma.

Health is a problem too. Residents of Morrisania and Highbridge have a 75 percent higher rate of teenage pregnancy than the rest of the city, and the highest percentage of residents who die before age 75.

What the Bronx does have is a plethora of cheap real estate that would be attractive to startups, a location that is 30 minutes away from venture capital located in four of richest counties in the country, five major hospitals, and seven colleges and universities.

Panelists spoke of both nurturing businesses within the Bronx, as well as luring new ones to the borough.

Rogina Coar-Smith, director of procurement and MWBE Programs at the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, talked about partnering with existing small business owners, to help them stay on top of the latest technology trends.

“Technology is the next step to moving everybody into an era of growth, employment, and education,” she said.

Teresita Abay Krueger, an advisory board member of Latin Business Today and director of social media for the Murray Hill Institute, said one of the challenges she and others face is demonstrating to large enterprises what the return on investment (ROI) is when it comes to technology.

“A case in point is retail,” she said. “They were pretty slow for a period of time in departing from their classic brick and mortar store environment to that virtual environment.

“You really have to demonstrate to the folks what is the ROI, and it has to be in dollars and cents.”

When it comes to luring investors to the Bronx, Coar-Smith also called it a public relations issue. Many investors are still stuck with that notion that “The Bronx is burning.”

“We have anchor stores, there are tennis courts, we have parks, all of that is here. Yes, we used to have a crime problem, but if you look at the crime, actually we’re a little bit safer than a lot of the other boroughs.”

Nestor Davidson, a Fordham professor of law, speculated that just one or two success stories from a startup like Etsy or Foursquare could be all it takes to put the Bronx on the map.

“The conditions are so ripe here . . . that if you can overcome that information barrier, and you communicate to people who think in a very different way and are attuned to that spark of what a successful environment is, it can quickly become a virtuous cycle,” he said.

The panel also featured Anjali Kumar, senior counsel, Google Inc. and adjunct professor, Gabelli School of Business, and Charlene Reid, executive director/principal of the Bronx Charter School for Excellence.