All-female team from the Master of Data Science for Public Policy win “Best Visualisation” at the hackathon in Munich.
At the last weekend of March, students from the Master of Data Science for Public Policy (MDS) at the Hertie School took part in DataFest Germany 2025, a hackathon hosted by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) in Munich. Despite being in the midst of their thesis period, our students were able to showcase their skills under intense time pressure. Three Hertie teams competed in the event: “Simon Says” (Miriam Runde, Rodrigo Dornelles, Camilo Pedraza, Luis Fernando Ramirez and Mohamed Islam Mekadmini from LMU), “The Counterfactuals 2.0” (Xiaohan Wu, Jennifer Estigene, Anzhelika Belozerova, Monserrat Lopez and Gayatri Shejwal), and “Alt + Ctrl + Defeat” (Isabella Urbano-Trujillo, Sofía García-Durrer).
Winning “Best Visualisation”: “Not All Roofs Are Equal”
The all-female team The Counterfactuals 2.0 took home the “Best Visualisation” award for their project “Not All Roofs Are Equal: Income Inequality and Housing Access Among Migrant Populations in Germany”. Their collaborative spirit and analytical skills made the team’s project a success for the second year in a row.
MDS student Monserrat Lopez explains her team’s project: “We explored how spatial inequality and migration intersect in housing access across Germany. Using geospatial data analysis, we visualised disparities in living space and their correlations with income, regional divides, and environmental factors.”
The project revealed how income levels, regional divides, and migration status significantly influence housing access in Germany. Areas with higher migrant populations and those in the East consistently had less living space per person, highlighting persistent structural inequalities. Additionally, environmental factors such as air pollution were closely linked to housing conditions, showing that marginalised communities often face overlapping disadvantages. Their spatial regression model demonstrated strong predictive power, offering valuable insights into the intersection of housing policy and social disparities.
Exploring public policy and data science
Rodrigo Dornelles, an MDS student and a member of Simon Says, shares his team’s project on public investment and voting in Germany: “We focussed on integrating external datasets to enrich Germany’s municipal-level data. By aggregating data on the 2025 elections and constructing a comprehensive database of public amenities, we developed an index to measure policy impact. Our analysis reinforced the idea that a lack of public investment could strengthen far-right sentiment.”
Commenting on the hackathon as a whole, he says: “It was also inspiring to see outstanding work from other teams, especially our fellow Hertie students. We were incredibly proud of their presentations and thrilled to contribute meaningful insights within such a short time frame.”
The competition, organized and hosted by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, brought together 114 participants from 15 universities across 12 cities. Over the course of three days, 24 teams, supported by 17 staff members, engaged in a 48-hour hackathon, tackling public policy challenges using a provided dataset.
We are proud of our students’ achievements and wish them continued success in their future endeavours!
Interested in studying data science at the Hertie School? Read more about our Master of Data Science for Public Policy.
Contact
- Aliya Boranbayeva, Associate Communications and Events | Data Science Lab
