The United States is experiencing a rapid build-out of data centers, critical infrastructure powering AI and the digital economy. 

These facilities place heavy demands on water, energy, and land, often colliding with local land-use goals, regional sustainability efforts, and national economic development priorities.

Co-led by LMI, UVA’s School of Data Science, and the UVA National Security Data & Policy Institute (NSDPI), this challenge asks teams to analyze that expansion and operationalize insights with data science, illuminating tradeoffs through a lens of your choice: technical, environmental, social/cultural, or policy.

Some directions you might take include:

What you’ll deliver: 

Decision-ready artifacts for planners, communities, or operators—something that helps a real stakeholder see, decide, or act. Your submission must include:

• Curated data asset (cleaned/joined dataset or feature set) with a short Data Card (provenance, licenses, caveats)
• Decision tool(s), which could include:
  • Interactive map/dashboard,
  • AI/ML model, and/or
  • Lightweight AI/agentic-workflow proof-of-concept

• Reproducible analysis (Jupyter/R notebooks + README with exact run steps)
• Impact note (1 page): stakeholder, decision improved, key assumptions/uncertainty, and “what’s next”

You have flexibility in topic and methods; the goal isn’t a market-ready startup product; it’s working toward data science-based foundations and tools that leverages data to drive better decisions about U.S. data-center growth.

Timeline: 

Rules: 

1. Eligibility

• To be eligible to win a prize in the Data-to-Impact Challenge, a group must:
  • Register to participate in the Challenge under the appropriate timelines and guidelines set out by the Challenge.
  • Be part of a group of 2-4 individuals that make up a single team. We encourage people to work in teams to provide a diversity of perspectives and expertise to the challenge. Teams larger than 4 individuals will not be permitted. Prizes are given per person in the winning teams, so the size of the team does not determine the payout available to the winners.
  • Participate in a brief mid-point check-in for continued mentorship and guidance on their solution.

2. Submission

• Submissions should include the registration (with Executive Summary form) and final presentation materials. All materials are required in order to be formally considered. 

3. Prize Payment

• Challenge winners will be issued payment directly from the University of Virginia after prizes have been announced. 

4. Intellectual Property

• The School of Data Science and LMI are committed to openness and transparency in ideas and technology. All teams are free to discuss their ideas with other parties and entrants and are encouraged to collaborate with each other as appropriate. By participating in the Challenge, each entrant allows LMI and UVA to reproduce, publish, post, and display publicly the submission title, headline, executive summary, and other non-protected submission content on the web or elsewhere, in perpetuity. Entrants must clearly delineate any protected IP and/or confidential information that is brought to the challenge and included in the submission so that it can be treated as a proprietary element of the solution.
  
  

Register a Team

To participate, complete and submit the Executive Summary template by December 5th, 2026 to register your 2-4 person team.