Northwestern Data Viz Championship
Calling all Northwestern students, faculty, and staff! Showcase your data visualization skills for the chance to win prizes and compete for the prestigious Big Ten Data Viz Championship Title.
Cash prizes will be awarded to the participants who finish 1st ($250), 2nd ($150), or 3rd ($75) in either the student or faculty/staff category based on judging by the Northwestern Love Data Committee.
How to Participate
Students Requirements:- Students must use the college fight song dataset available here. Students may supplement with additional publicly available data if they choose to do so.
- Students must be actively enrolled at the institution for undergraduate or graduate coursework, thesis, or dissertation study.
- Students may collaborate in teams of up to two people for submissions.
- Visualizations must be accessible via a link that requires no login during the Championship voting.
- Submit a visualization using:
- Public research that you are involved in at Northwestern,
- Something related to the Big Ten (e.g., athletics, enrollment data, etc.), or
- Information about Northwestern- either the institution as a whole or a specific initiative/population.
- All submissions must follow the schools’ institutional data policies and guidelines (i.e., please do not submit a viz with Social Security Numbers or HIPAA information).
- Visualizations must be accessible via a link that requires no login during the Championship voting.
Other resources can be found here.
Are you interested in participating in the competition, but unsure where to start or how to finish? Everyone planning to submit a visualization is invited to attend open office hours on these dates:
- November 18, 2025 from 10am-noon
- January 8, 2026 from 1-3pm
These sessions will be held in the Mudd Library Small Classroom 2124. Experts in data visualization and GIS from Northwestern's Research Computing and Data Services team and the Libraries will be available to answer questions, provide feedback, brainstorm, and help make your visualizations the best they can be. Don't miss this opportunity!
Submitting to the Northwestern Competition
Submission Deadline: January 14, 2026 at 11:59pm
All entries must be submitted using the online submission form linked below. Entries will be judged by a panel of Northwestern visualization experts based on this scoring rubric. Designers of the top three submissions for the Northwestern competition in both categories, students and faculty/staff, will receive cash prizes (see above). The first place winner in each category will be submitted to the Big Ten Data Viz Championship (details). Entries must meet a minimum score to be considered for the prizes and submission to the Viz Championship.
Submit your data visualization!