At a time when brands, retailers, and service providers have vast quantities of proprietary data at their disposal, the role of consumer insights professionals is changing dramatically. Reflecting this evolution, GfK has relaunched its NextGen Competition for undergraduates, challenging them to extract insights from a variety of raw data sets during a 10-day hackathon.

The NextGen Data Science Hackathon Competition will take place from January 17^th to January 28^th, 2019, with students working at their own locations to solve timely marketing problems supplied by GfK Client Mentors. At the beginning of the contest, GfK will provide access to consumer data for the students to analyze and interpret; and on the 28^th, participating teams will have 10 minutes each to present their findings and suggested actions.

The winning team will receive a $5,000 award, meet remotely with Client Mentors to discuss their work, and be featured in GfK publicity related to the event.

The NextGen Data Science Hackathon Competition is open to undergraduates from any major attending schools in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Students interested in taking part should contact marketing@gfk.com to register as soon as possible; topics for the competition will be announced in December 2018.