Senior majoring in neuroscience, Jonathan Briganti and his team, won a Mobile App for Global Good in Healthcare hackathon.

In April, the Center for Business Intelligence and Analytics (CBIA) in the Pamplin College of Business partnered with AT&T to sponsor the Mobile Apps for Global Good in Healthcare hackathon, designed to lead to smartphone applications that improve health, reduce costs, and enhance the patient's experience.

In a mere 24 hours, the winning team — Jonathan Briganti, a rising senior majoring in neuroscience; Brian Elliott, a double major in electrical engineering and computer engineering who will graduate in December; and Madeline Yaskowski, a rising sophomore majoring in public relations — built an app to track mental health and detect early warning signs of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Along with a $2,500 prize, the team won the attention of healthcare provider Carilion Clinic, which has continued to work with Briganti and Elliott to further develop the app.

That transcendent outcome is the type of result that CBIA executive director Linda Oldham wants to encourage. Oldham is guiding a new one-year master's degree program that confers a master of science in business administration with a concentration in business analytics. The 30-credit-hour program is split evenly between business and analytics cores, with a capstone project whose structure somewhat resembles an extended, narrowly focused hackathon.

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