Join us for the Data Viz Championship Showcase, where creativity meets insight in a celebration of data storytelling across the Big Ten Academic Alliance. This session features the top data visualization entries from participating universities - highlighting the talent, innovation, and diverse perspectives of students, faculty, and staff.

Come explore powerful visualizations tackling real-world questions and uncover which entries take home top honors in both the Popular Vote and Judges’ Choice categories. Whether you're a data viz enthusiast or simply curious to see data come to life, this is your front-row seat to discover the Big Ten’s data champions.

Judges

• Kelly Burns, a Research Data Management Specialist with Purdue Libraries, received her Masters of Science in Library Sciences from the University of Kentucky in 2023. As a member of the Purdue University Research Repository (PURR) team, her role is focused on developing and sharing tools and resources for managing institutional and federal research data with students and faculty.Kelly also has a BA and MA in Spanish language and Latin American studies. As a lifetime advocate for libraries, she spends most of her free time with a book in her hands. After moving to West Lafayette from Louisville, Ky in 2024 she has enjoyed spending time outside with her dog, Colt, exploring many new places in the Greater Lafayette area.
• Jimmy Dwyer began his data journey in an unexpected place: an administrative assistant’s desk at Grand Canyon University, where endless repetitive tasks pushed him to automate anything he could touch. That spark turned into a full career pivot, leading him through advanced graduate training and increasingly technical roles across major university systems. During the pandemic, he stepped into the high-velocity world of e-commerce, joining Carvana at the height of its explosive growth. There, he rebuilt data pipelines, repaired broken reporting ecosystems, and delivered operational dashboards used across logistics and fulfillment teams. The pace was unforgiving, but it sharpened his instinct for clean data, reliable automation, and fast, defensible insights. Education pulled him back. And there was only one destination that made sense: The Ohio State University. Since 2022, Jimmy has served as a Senior Analyst within the Online division under Academic Affairs, where he designs end-to-end pipelines and self-service reporting using SQL, Python, and Tableau Prep. His work powers real decisions from enrollment forecasting to application-pipeline health to executive-level program planning. Across every role, the theme is the same: build clarity from chaos, retire fragile processes, and give people tools they can trust.