<aside> <img src="/icons/rocket_purple.svg" alt="/icons/rocket_purple.svg" width="40px" /> Get ready to launch! At CDC 2025, there’s nowhere to go but up.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/megaphone_purple.svg" alt="/icons/megaphone_purple.svg" width="40px" /> **First, open a communication line.
Join the CDC Slack** if you have not already! The CDC Slack is where you can chat with other hackers, ask for help, submit memes, and get the most up-to-date day-of announcements. Make sure to turn your notifications on! Join here.
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The Carolina Data Challenge, or CDC, is UNC’s weekend-long data science hackathon hosted by Carolina Analytics and Data Science (CADS) in partnership with the UNC Department of Computer Science and the School of Data Science and Society.
This year’s mission hub is UNC Computer Science’s Sitterson Hall. Our intrepid hackers will form teams and break the confines of gravity when submitting a project on their chosen domain.
Of course, every good mission has plenty of excitement. Interact with our sponsors at the sponsorship fair, attend workshops to add new skills to your roster, engage with other organizations at the club fair, grab great merch, earn prizes, and meet new friends!
CDC is completely beginner-friendly, with numerous workshops and networking opportunities for those completely new to data science, ensuring that explorers of all skill levels have a chance to reach for the stars and take home gravity-defying prizes!
After liftoff at the opening ceremony, this year's Data Challenge will blast into orbit: Zero Gravity.
Students will work in teams to create data science projects using datasets surrounding this theme.
Teams will get the chance to work on projects focusing on one of five tracks: Business, Health Science, Social Science, Natural Science, and Pop Culture! Each track will have their own hand-picked dataset to explore, all with varying difficulties, unique challenges, and interesting insights.
After atmospheric reentry, teams will showcase their stellar projects to a panel of judges consisting of UNC Professors and industry professionals from our sponsors. These cosmic judges will select winning teams in each track to take home gravity-defying prizes!
Project Expectations and Judging
<aside> <img src="/icons/camera_pink.svg" alt="/icons/camera_pink.svg" width="40px" /> Follow us on Instagram! @cdc.unc
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