On 31 March and 3 April, Iscte Business School, in partnership with Avanade, held a Datathon as part of the Iscte Business School Sustainability Summit 2025. This event, devised in the 2024 edition, was aligned with the institution's strategic plan, focused on ethics, responsibility and sustainability, and aimed to raise awareness among the community of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

 The Datathon was divided into two parts. On 31 March, the 38 participating students worked for 8 hours on the challenge presented by the Avanade team, with continuous support from the school and Avanade monitors. The challenge consisted of analysing consumption patterns, identifying barriers faced by customers and developing sustainable strategies for a consumer goods company, using data analysis, machine learning and visualisation techniques.

To make the event more dynamic, Avanade organised integration activities such as a game of bingo and the construction of spaghetti towers, awarding prizes to the winners of each activity. 

The second part of the event took place on the morning of 3 April, when the teams presented a two-minute pitch. For the final phase, four teams were selected by the jury and one by the audience. From the final eight-minute presentations, the three winning teams were identified.

The Iscte Business School monitors included Bruna Pereira, Tomás do Nascimento and Francisca Passos, while Avanade was represented by Andreia Sousa, Carolina Ferreira, Gonçalo Carvalho and João Fernandes. The jury included Ana Simaens and Raul Laureano from Iscte Business School, and Ricardo Pires, Manuela Almeida, Tiago Sousa and João Braga from Avanade.

The finalist teams were BRAVE MINDS, DATAGENTS, DATHTLETIC, TEAM 10 and TEAM 12. The winners were: 

1st place: DATAGENTS made up of students Beatriz Ferreira Mota, Joana De Lima Caiadas Morais and Maria de Arruda Alves, all from the Master's programme in Business Analytics. 

2nd place: TEAM 12 made up of students Beatriz Maria Almeida Contente (MSc Business Analytics), Denilson Cristovão Cardoso (MSc Business Analytics), Diogo Moço dos Santos (BSc Data Science) and Paulo Miguel Gaspar de Oliveira (MSc Management). 

3rd place: TEAM 10 made up of students Afonso Garcia Martins (BSc Finance and Accounting), Catarina Isabel da Silva Lima do Céu Pereira (MSc Business Analytics), Guilherme Vaz Piteira (BSc Data Science) and Helder Alexandre Gomes Santos (BSc Psychology). 

The winners received merchandise kits from Avanade and Iscte Business School, with additional prizes such as smart booknotes, smart bands and face-to-face training in Data and AI at Avanade. The winning team also won an internship opportunity. 

This event provided participants with personal and professional growth by stimulating critical thinking and creativity, taking the SDGs into account, as well as collaboration and team spirit.

More photos of the event can be found here.