Briana Neuberger on first-place team at U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Hackathon

2015 Jun 26

Herndon, Va., resident Briana Neuberger was on the winning team at the recent U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation's GEOINT Hackathon held at DigitalGlobe offices in Herndon, Va.

Neuberger is a fourth-year student at the Rochester Institute of Technology's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science. Neuberger, a SMART (Science, Mathematics And Research for Transformation) scholar, is also majoring in industrial systems engineering at RIT.

Her team competed against other developers and data scientists challenged to develop a model for the transmission of Ebola in West Africa that could extend to other scenarios and geographies. The solution had to explain unaffected areas of West Africa and predict locations of additional outbreaks.

Neuberger is an intern at the U.S. Department of Defense. Her team, dubbed "The Interns," took first place and $15,000 for modeling the spread of the Ebola virus through the West African coast. Members of the winning team also received free registration to the Geospatial Intelligence Foundation's GEOINT 2015 Symposium on June 22-25 in. Washington, D.C.

The GEOINT Hackathon, held June 12-14, was sponsored by DigitalGlobe, Esri and OGSystems, and included judges from USGIF, NGA, DigitalGlobe, Esri and OGSystems.

"I very much enjoyed the fact that USGIF, OGS, DigitalGlobe, and ESRI sponsored the Hackathon," said Neuberger. "It was a great opportunity to participate more in the geospatial community and I look forward to other events they may hold in the future."