Can Big Data transform Michigan? Wayne State thinks so and is hosting a symposium in March to prove it

Wayne State University's Big Data & Business Analytics Group believes that Big Data is the bridge to the next wave of innovation and growth for Southeast Michigan. As part of their broader goal to contribute to the overall health and economic well-being of Detroit, the group will host its second annual Big Data and Business Analytics Symposium, Competing on Analytics, March 10-11, 2015, at Wayne State's McGregor Memorial Conference Center. The group is made up of renowned experts dedicated to solving real-life business problems in collaboration with regional industry. The symposium will focus on pragmatic issues faced while deploying Big Data strategies to drive business success. It will have a special focus on managing and analyzing the data captured through marketing, product development, manufacturing, distribution, sales and service in a global setting. "Big Data management and analytics require a slew of advanced concepts, tools and technologies, and the required skills are hard to come by," says Satyendra Rana, CTO at Loven Systems and committee member of the Big Data and Business Analytics Symposium. Several keynote speakers will discuss the fundamentals of Big Data management, including Kenneth Park, M.D., vice president of research environment and business solutions at HealthCore; Michelle Eissele, senior director of data operations at IHS Automotive; Dave Shuman, consumer products and retail SME at Cloudera; and David Vanderveen, director of product development analytics for General Motors. Their addresses will cover topics related to the value, competitive potential and the technological perspective of Big Data analytics. Ratna Babu Chinnam, Wayne State industrial and systems engineering professor and a founding director of the Big Data & Business Analytics group, argues Big Data does have transformative potential as has been shown by many lead adopters. However, extracting value from Big Data is no ordinary task. Required skills are hard to come by, and companies have to overcome entrenched cultural barriers for collaboration among silos. Symposium attendees will gain insight and learn tips on identifying Big Data opportunities, developing business cases and using analytics to drive business success. The symposium will also provide a clear distinction between legacy analytics that are pervasive in industry and the emerging next-generation tools, technologies and processes that will form the foundation for a new wave of innovation and growth. A special feature for this year's symposium is the inclusion of two full-day tutorials. The first introduces Hadoop stack and its evolution over the years. All basic components of Hadoop will be covered. The second is on the distributed programming framework Apache Spark and its use in scalable data science. "This symposium is exactly the type of thing that we need in Detroit and in our community to nurture the talent we have in Southeast Michigan and elsewhere to be able to drive into the future," explains 2014 symposium speaker Steve Ambrose, vice president and CIO for DTE Energy. The event is open to all business and information technology executives, decision makers, marketing professionals and others interested in learning how to put analytics into action. To register, visit events.wayne.edu/2015/03/10/register-for-2015-big-data-business-analytics-symposium-56672 . The Big Data & Business Analytics Group includes more than 30 faculty members and more than 50 research students from various university departments who collaborate on Big Data and business analytics projects. The team is structured by six focus areas covering the entire Big Data and analytics life cycle, from acquiring Big Data to extracting business value from it- big data value management, methods and techniques, integration and management, automotive and defense analytics, health care analytics and service analytics. To express interest in collaborating with Wayne State's Big Data & Business Analytics Group, contact Ratna Babu Chinnam at ratna.chinnam@wayne.edu or 313-577-4846 or any one of the directors of the Big Data & Business Analytics Group. Visit the group's website at bigdata@wayne.edu . Published: Wed, Feb 04, 2015