(L-r) Skylar Tenan, Emily Breidegam, Dr. Scott Zoldi, FICO's Chief Analytics Officer, and Emanuela Halm. All three students are senior Business Analytics majors and are participating in FICO's Analytics Challenge. — *In this photo:* (L-r) Skylar Tenan, Emily Breidegam, Dr. Scott Zoldi, FICO’s Chief Analytics Officer, and Emanuela Halm. All three students are senior Business Analytics majors and are participating in FICO’s Analytics Challenge.

On Campus

FICO Analytics Challenge trains DSU students how AI combats fraud

Friday, September 13, 2024

Some Delaware State University business students are learning about financial fraud and how artificial intelligence (AI) is used to counter and protect against such crimes.

FICO, a prominent global analytics software leader, has launched the second year of its FICO Educational Analytics Challenge program created for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Dr. Scott Zoldi, FICO’s Chief Analytics Officer, visited the DSU campus on Sept. 12 to start a semester-long program featuring remote mentoring from FICO’s leading data scientists. The FICO executive also gave a guest lecture on “Fighting the Fraudsters of Tomorrow with AI” at the University’s Bank of America Building. Dr. Scott Zoldi of FICO gave a guest lecture on financial fraud and how it can be countered by AI.

The semester-long Analytics Challenge competition at DSU will be a real-world analytics challenge focusing on financial fraud detection. The competing teams of students will work to identify anomalies and fraud features leveraged in a real-time fraud detection model.

“Diverse viewpoints and voices are necessary to develop any AI that is unbiased. FICO is doing something to address that need and working directly with students at HBCUs to encourage a more diverse future of data scientists,” Dr. Zoldi said. “The Educational Analytics Challenge program not only empowers students to get a real-world experience with data analytics, but also to learn the fundamentals of building responsible, auditable, and ethical AI models to protect and safely advance AI practices for future generations.”

Dr. Zoldi said FICO is teaching DSU students how to build these types of AI Models.

“They are learning something that is unique in the data science and analytics environment, for which there is no class for that in school. It is a really unique skill set, and transaction analytics are increasingly becoming very, very important for every type of application. They will learn more about where data points are collected and how that will enable better decisions to be made about consumers.

The winning team of the competition will be announced at the end of the semester. FICO’s Analytics Challenge program is being conducted at Morehouse College and Bowie State University.