Woman in black polo with yellow jacket at her waist standing and smiling at front.

From code to impact: ASU students excel in Codeflow Spark Challenge, supported by TIAA

Jonathan Crowell

December 4, 2024

Arizona State University retained its No. 2 ranking among public U.S. universities for employable graduates. One notable way ASU students have opportunities to gain real-world experience that translates their classroom learnings into workforce skills is by participating in the ASU Spark Challenge hackathon series, hosted by ASU Enterprise Technology Community Partners.

Students from across ASU recently gathered for the CodeFlow Spark Challenge Data Pipeline on November 15 in the Creativity Commons. The event was supported by Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), a leading provider of secure retirements and outcome-focused investment solutions for millions of people and thousands of institutions.

The task? Participants broke out into teams to come up with their own unique take on how best to leverage Amazon Web Services and generative artificial intelligence (AI) scripting in order to develop a dynamic end-to-end data pipeline that would ingest data, perform quality checks and transformations and upload it to TIAA’s target system. The end goal was to help TIAA participant clients be able to upload, visualize and easily analyze investment data.

The second annual TIAA and ASU Spark Challenge, co-sponsored by ASU Enterprise Technology, AZNext – on behalf of the W.P. Carey School of Business – and TIAA brought together 84 student participants, organized into 26 teams.

“We have incredibly brilliant and talented students here at ASU, and I'm always blown away by their ability to pick up new and emerging materials they’re given and rise to the challenge," Olivia Herneddo, lead experience designer and senior program manager for Community Partners at Enterprise Technology and long-standing host of the Spark Challenge hackathon series shared.

Participating students in this Spark Challenge gathered for the kick-off event to hear from industry and education experts including: Dr. John Rares Almasan, Padma Jandhyala and Ramesh Reddy from TIAA. They also received mentorship from TIAA technologists to accelerate their project ideas and troubleshoot with tools provided by TIAA.

The teams had 48 hours following the kickoff to develop and submit their unique teams’ solutions. Technical evaluation ensued the following week, led by TIAA's Director of AI Emerging Technologies Sonam Jha, and nine finalist teams pitched their solutions to a panel of judges — that included a mix of ASU technology and education leaders, as well as TIAA professionals.

Team submissions were evaluated on criteria such as functionality and integration, creativity and scalability, ease of implementation and innovative use of generative AI.

“Events like the Codeflow hackathon are crucial for strengthening TIAA’s relationship with organizations like ASU,” Senior Managing Director and Head of AI and Emerging Tech at TIAA Almasan said. “They create a platform for innovation and collaboration, allowing us to engage directly with talented students and faculty.”

According to Rob Buelow, program director for AZNext grant, the hackathon events offer students the chance to teambuild as they work on real world problems.

“If partner companies like TIAA like the solutions the students create and implement it into their business operations, that is a great feather in the students’ caps,” Buelow said. “The hackathons also offer the students opportunities to work with top-level talent and technology.”

Team Sparky Coders, consisting of participating students Anish Kolan, Matthew Luo, Khushi Patel and Saketh Pabolu took away the top prize, which includes two paid summer internships with TIAA, including housing, in Charlotte, North Carolina to continue their Spark Challenge application’s development.

Visit here for more information about upcoming Spark Challenges.

Special thanks to the esteemed panel of judges who dedicated their time and expertise to evaluate project submissions:

Padma Jandhyala, GenAI Product Delivery, MD, TIAA

Ramesh Chintamreddy, Information Systems Architect, SR, TIAA

Kate Giovacchini, Executive Director, Digital Innovations, ASU

Dr. Raghu Santanam, Senior Associate Dean for Executive Education, Corporate Partnerships and Lifelong Learning, McCord Chair in Business, ASU

Paul Alvarado, Program Manager, AI Acceleration Team, ASU