Two Department of Computer Science master's students, Trupesh Patel (M.S. in Computer Science) and Andrew Schatz (M.S. in Data Science), won the first place for the best graduate paper at the ACM Mid-Southeast 2018 conference. The paper, "Classifying Basketball Players by Hall of Fame Merit," predicts the probability of basketball players achieving the prestigious honor of being granted access to the Hall of Fame. This project was done using various machine learning strategies and data mining skills, under the guidance of Professor Chengcui Zhang.

Patel and Schatz's project was an obvious choice for best graduate paper at the conference, as it demonstrated a solid analysis and evaluation framework and pursued a unique goal. It was also one of the only projects at the conference that was not funded by any third-party organization, meaning that it out-performed many well-funded research projects.

Participating in the ACM Mid-Southeast conferences is one of the most rewarding experiences for computer science students at UAB, and the department encourages current and future students to submit their projects to upcoming conferences. It is not only for graduate students — undergraduate students have their own category and this year greatly outnumbered graduate students. The conference encourages creativity in student projects, as seen by this submission and the undergraduate champion for best project, which was a 2D-style video game created by five students from Middle Tennessee State University.

In addition to the rewarding experience, the conference location of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, is beautiful place and offers entertaining activities to conference attendees. So make sure to submit your projects to ACM Mid-Southeast 2019 conference, where hopefully you will have as much fun as Trupesh and Andrew!