Haslam Business Analytics Student Wins Booz Allen Hamilton Internship Award

October 21, 2016

Bryan Noreen Automated Rail MonitoringBryan Noreen, a master’s of business analytics student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, recently received the VIP intern award at Booz Allen Hamilton.

The Haslam College of Business student, one of a pool of 320, interned at the global management and technology company this summer. The award recognizes exemplary performance and leadership as well as embodiment of the company’s core values.

Noreen spent this, his second internship with Booz Allen Hamilton, working with a team on a projected they called Curtis, to analyze crime on rail systems in Europe.

“We used machine learning models to predict and score crime levels around stations in major cities,” Noreen said. “We used a color gradient to code the frequency of occurrences to make the data easily readable and accessible.”

Noreen’s team placed first against 13 intern teams focusing on analytical challenges and presented their findings to a panel of six senior-level executives.

“Bryan was integral to our team’s success this summer,” said his manager and the team’s staff leader, Derek Yeager. “He possesses a versatile skillset that includes top-notch analytical thinking, leadership, communication and technical skills.”

Bryan Noreen at deskNoreen’s team developed the data visualization in an open-ended manner so it could be integrated into a mobile application in the future. They worked on the application using the R programming language, which is designed for work in statistics.

“I really enjoy R programming, and my internship gave me the ability to utilize what I have learned while also being pushed into areas with which I was unfamiliar,” Noreen said. “Our application uses a Support Vector Machine model and runs in R Shiny. I have enjoyed digging into those two areas.”

R Shiny, a Web application framework, provides tools to present statistical analysis in a user-friendly manner on websites. At the conclusion of Noreen’s internship, Booz Allen Hamilton offered him a full-time position.

“Having expanded my knowledge of modeling, as well as of R Shiny, I think I’ll be well served in a full-time job,” Noreen said. “As has often been stressed in my Haslam classes, the ability to present analytical information is a very important skill to practice.”