Saint Mary's University shines at Atlantic Schools of Business Case Competition

Ashish Ganapathy, Lauren Golding, Professor Jeff Muton, Ramji Srinivasan, Shiva Kakkar

Team 1: Lindsey Nalunga, Katherine Hanscom, Mark Mitton

Team 2: Ashish Ganapathy, Lauren Golding, Ramji Srinivasan, Shiva Kakkar

On September 24, Sobey School of Business Bachelor of Commerce students Lauren Golding, Shiva Kakkar, Ramji Srinivasan and Ashish Ganapathy walked away with a second-place win at the Atlantic Schools of Business (ASB) Case Competition sponsored by Grant Thornton LLP (Canada), hosted by Mount Saint Vincent University. The competition was part of the annual ASB Conference—one of Canada’s longest-running academic business conferences. 

“I had a wonderful, enriching and insightful experience at the ASB Case Competition,” said Ganapathy, a third-year BComm student majoring in Accounting and Finance. “I prepared forecasts using financial analysis techniques and improved my public speaking and financial analysis skills.” 

Teams representing universities across the Atlantic provinces participated in a competition where students were asked to analyze and create a solution to a business case (a narrative about a real-life company and the problems it’s facing) and present it to a judging panel. This year’s business case was centered around a Newfoundland-based Childcare Cooperative in need of expansion to meet the overwhelming demand for such services.

“It was a proud moment for our team. Our case was based on real challenges faced by Atlantic Canadians—immigration and population growth. We were tested on an array of skills like critical thinking, quantitative and analytical skills.” said Shiva Kakkar, a second-year BComm student majoring in Finance. “Jeff Muton, professor for the BCOM 4481 Business Case Competition course, provided excellent mentoring throughout our preparation for the competition. The learning experience was exceptionally valuable, as we acquired a solid framework for effectively tackling business cases.”

The Bachelor of Commerce Business Case Competition course takes students from classroom learning to real-world challenges. Students get to test their abilities to think on their feet and compete against other students, in consultation with industry leaders. 

At the Sobey School of Business, students will not only learn how to do business well, they’ll learn how to do business for good. 

Sobey School undergrad contributes to COVID research for Scientific Reports

Kyle Morton BComm’23

Kyle Morton had yet to complete his undergraduate degree at Saint Mary’s University when he used machine learning in a ground-breaking study of the COVID-19 virus for Scientific Reports. To contribute to an article in the world’s largest scientific journal would be an accomplishment for more experienced researchers. For Morton, it was a miracle.

 “I remember when my economics professor, Yigit Aydede, told me the article had been accepted,” said Morton. “I jumped out of my seat and clapped my hands. It was another fantastic experience that Saint Mary’s made possible.”

Morton participated in the research project over six months during 2022, when he linked two large data sets, one from Statistics Canada and the other from Nova Scotia’s 811 system that recorded influenza symptoms during the first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Yigit Aydede and Kyle Morton work together examine data for their research

The resulting article by Saint Mary’s University’s Dr. Yigit Aydede, and Jan Ditzen, Free University of Bolzano, Italy, Identifying the regional drivers of influenza-like illness in Nova Scotia, Canada, with dominance analysis - Scientific Reports, unveils a new methodology, one that may assist health officials to both predict where viruses will spread and target interventions to halt them. Read more about the study.

“Working with large data sets, it is easy for errors to go unnoticed, because you cannot visually inspect them. The challenge was: How do you make sure there are no mistakes that will end up leading to the wrong conclusions when you actually perform your analysis?”

Morton sees machine learning as a third form of statistics, one that is predictive. Once he had prepared the data, making sure it was clean and free from errors, Professor Aydede and the research team used powerful algorithms to combine both sets. The results revealed the spatial as well as the temporal spread of the virus in real-time, something that was only possible due to the extraordinary and detailed data concerning COVID-19 symptoms, unparalleled access to Nova Scotia’s 811 records and the unique adaptation of algorithms originally designed for the finance industry.

The opportunity to study and work alongside Dr. Aydede in the Sobey School of Business has transformed Morton’s career aspirations, inspiring him to use machine learning to solve problems.

“I chose Saint Mary’s because it had a very good reputation for its business school. I liked the smaller yet international campus and the undergraduate focus. I gained a lot more experience, working with my peers and my professors one-on-one; I would not have had the same opportunity at other, larger institutions.”

While studying in the Bachelor of Commerce program at the Sobey School of Business, Morton was the recipient of two scholarships from donors to Saint Mary’s University: The Chrysler Canada Scholarship and the KPMG Future Leaders Scholarship. He also received the Fred and Ruth Stork German Studies Award from Waterloo University. This Fall, Morton begins his Master’s in Data Science at the London School of Economics, something he describes as “a dream come true.”