The first SMU team to enter a national competition for sorting and comparing vast amounts of data took first place. Celebrating the $5,000 prize in the 2008 Data Mining Shootout are SMU President R. Gerald Turner with (from left) team members Jayjit Roy, Manan Roy, Stefan Avdjiev and faculty sponsor Tom Fomby, economics professor in Dedman College. Thirty national teams competed in the contest sponsored by SAS, Dow Chemical Company and the Central Michigan University Research Corporation. The prize was based on solutions to a complex scheduling problem involving a fictitious airline attempting to maximize customer satisfaction at three airports. A new team is working on a computer-program solution for the 2009 competition, Fomby says.