Chalk Up Another Award for UNBC Folks

By Submitted Article  Opinion 250

Prince George, B.C.- More international awards for a professor and student at UNBC.

The pair, Computer Science Professor Waqar Haque and fourth year undergraduate student Jake Edwards, recently won awards at two separate international conferences for their work .

First, it was the Best Research Paper Award out of submissions from 22 participating countries at the International Conference on Information and Communication Systems in Jordan.

Dr. Haque and Edwards then went on to win another award for Best Research Paper at the Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing Conference in Singapore last month.

“It was a fantastic experience for me. I really appreciated the chance to work with Dr. Haque on these papers” says Edwards. “It’s an opportunity I probably wouldn’t have had at a larger institution. I may not have even learned that this type of research is something I enjoy, which it certainly is.”

Both of the winning papers concern methods of analyzing raw data from unconventional sources to achieve business objectives. “Business data is traditionally collected by units such as finance, marketing, or sales that have an eye for the type of analytics they need and collect the appropriate information,” says Dr. Haque, who is also a professor in UNBC’s School of Business.

“Basically if you look at the information being recorded by any business, such as the transaction history in a bank account or at a retail outlet, it’s all raw data,” says Edwards. “A specific business objective may not have been in mind when the data was compiled, but the raw data can still be analyzed and transformed into information which can be used to answer business questions related to spending patterns, targeted marketing objectives, or any other point of interest.”