Summit Consulting Sponsors Virginia Tech Data Analytics Capstone Students

As the 2020 fall semester wraps up, Summit Consulting is excited to highlight its relationship with Virginia Tech’s Computational Modeling and Data Analytics (CMDA) program and its work with CMDA students on their capstone project.

The capstone is designed to give students real-world industry experience and serves as an extended internship and spotlight opportunity for them. This semester, Summit met weekly with CMDA capstone students to develop a Reestimate Analysis Tool, which is an online application used to visually display changes in current- and prior-year cash flows. The tool allows the user to easily understand year-over-year changes in reestimates. At the end of the semester, students presented the tool to their entire capstone class and industry sponsors.

“It takes a village to raise the next generation of data scientists,” says Summit founding partner Albert Lee, PhD. “Summit is proud to be part of the data science ecology, sponsoring a capstone project at Virginia Tech. We have been so impressed with the capstone project team—both its technical capabilities and ability to understand the business case.”

Students worked in a business setting with Summit professionals in their desired careers and learned technical skills, such as the Python-based Django web framework, that are valuable in today’s job market. Both aspects will greatly help them in their post-college job search. Summit is eager to help expand students’ skill sets while producing a tool that will also be useful for our clients.

Summit staff were very impressed with the students’ output, as well as their professionalism and adaptability, especially considering that they all maintained a full course load. “We cannot wait for the next sponsorship!” Lee says. In particular, Summit wants to recognize Mr. Fred Faltin, the students’ professor and co-head of the CMDA program. Mr. Faltin was featured in a Summit podcast this summer about corporate real estate markets.