Athletics Internship Provides Data Science Junior Valuable Hands-On Experience

Yash Ghadge was considering his options for higher education when he heard the siren's call of hands-on learning at The University of Toledo.

"I was really interested in internships," said Ghadge, who grew up in Indore, India. "I liked that I could integrate them into my program because that was something that I didn't think I could do back home. I'd be waiting until I graduated to get hands-on experience."

Ghadge, a junior studying data science with a minor in computer science, is particularly excited about his new role with Toledo Athletics. He's one of three interns in a new program designed for students to apply data analysis to athletics with an emphasis on business strategy, roster management and player performance metrics.

"It's been amazing to work with real datasets," said Ghadge, whose first project was to build a dashboard analyzing data on social media engagement to assist staff in identifying the optimal content to share on various platforms. "I'm used to working with sample datasets in classes, but here I could see the numbers changing in real time."

Toledo Athletics launched the Data Science Internship Program in collaboration with UToledo's School of Interdisciplinary Data Science, which was established last year as a hub for data science programs and activity. The school supports cross-campus collaboration while preparing students to meet a growing demand for data-savvy professionals who can make sense of vast troves of information.

"The Data Science Internship Program serves as a way to enhance the data-driven excellence initiative established within the Athletics Department, while also developing and creating relationships with the School of Interdisciplinary Data Science," said Henry Davidson, who oversees the new interns as assistant athletic director for student-athlete benefits and data analytics. "In addition, it allows for data science students to get experience working in athletics, helping develop meaningful skills and experience while gaining knowledge of how data science can be applied across various fields."

Ghadge has long been excited by numbers, a passion that he once intended to follow to an accounting degree program in India. Upon further consideration, he found a better career fit in data science, a field he sees as particularly exciting with the explosion in artificial intelligence tools and technology.

He's taken advantage of numerous opportunities to pursue his interest in numbers and data since he enrolled as a Rocket in 2023, including as a founding member of the UToledo Data Community, a student organization, and as an active member in Toledo Codes, a local organization of software developers, designers, entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts that has recently extended its reach to UToledo.

Ghadge also won a DeepRacer contest hosted by Amazon Web Services at UToledo in February, in which students applied artificial intelligence to drive small autonomous racing vehicles, and his team won first place in the "AI for Good" category at the first RocketHacks, a hackathon event where participants collaborate using computer programming and complementary skills to develop solutions to challenges, in March.

This spring he began a part-time internship as a data engineer with the First Solar, the solar energy giant with manufacturing operations in adjacent Wood County.

"UToledo has become a second home," he said. "There's so much to do around campus."

Ghadge learned about the Toledo Athletics internship through Dr. Bill Kalies, director of the School of Interdisciplinary Data Science. Beyond his interest in a hands-on learning experience, he said he saw it as an opportunity to learn about a sports scene that celebrates a very different type of football than he knew in India, among other unfamiliarities.

"I knew some of the sports, but not all of them," Ghadge said. "But I was keen to learn."

He said he's enjoyed the internship since he and his fellow interns settled into their workspace in Savage Arena in November.

"Henry, our manager, really knows his stuff," Ghadge said. "I'm learning a lot from him and from the other interns."

Davidson, meanwhile, said Ghadge "has been fantastic to work with."

"He showcases an impressive level of data science and intrapersonal skills and, in addition, he has a level of curiosity that allows him to absorb information quickly and learn more every day," he said. "He has a very bright future in data science, whether that be in athletics or in any other field in which data science is applied."