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CDRC holds Masters Dissertation Scheme 2021 Awards
16 February 2023
The nationwide awards featured recognition for UCL Geography student Lu Xia.
Since 2012, the nationwide Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) Masters Dissertation Scheme (MDS) has brought together masters students intent upon pursuing dissertations using retail and other industry data, their academic supervisors and industry contacts who are able to provide data or support ‘horizon-scanning’ research focused upon real world problems.
The MDS now also has an active alumni network of past students to maintain and further develop industry collaborations with CDRC.
Every year, the best dissertations are showcased at an event and three prizes are awarded to the best dissertations.
This year’s awards ceremony was held online, hosted by the Market Research Society’s Census and GeoDems Group, with prizes awarded by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Senior Policy Manager, Bruce Jackson.
Watch a recording of the ceremony below:
The winner was Disa Ramadhina (MSc Business Analytics, UCL) who worked with partner Entain Group on the relationship between the use of retail shopping and online gambling behaviour. Disa now works with Entain Group as a Compliance Data Analyst in their Safer Gambling team.
Runner-up Sharon Liu (MSc Operational Research with Data Science, University of Edinburgh) worked with longstanding MDS partner Walgreen Boots Alliance on enhancements to online recommender systems to personalise the customer experience.
Movement Strategies has also become a regular sponsor of MDS projects and worked with the other runner-up, UCL Geography's Lu Xia (MSc Social and Geographic Data Science) on inferring transport modes using GPS data.
Disa Ramadhina
Sharon Liu
Lu Xia
Our warmest congratulations to these very worthy winners, who share £1,000 in prize money.
This year the MDS attracted 80 applications for the 20 projects on offer, details of which can be found in the MDS Project Archive.
The CDRC is the UK's leading source of consumer data, bringing together world-class researchers from UCL along with the University of Leeds, University of Liverpool and the University of Oxford.
The Masters Dissertation Scheme 2022 is now open for proposals from industry and other partners – enquiries can be directed to Richard Arnold at richard.arnold@ucl.ac.uk.
This article was originally published on the CDRC website by Melinda Green, CDRC Communications and Public Engagement Officer.