AUA Students Complete a Consulting Project for a Social Venture

2 min read

YEREVAN, Armenia — The American University of Armenia (AUA) is happy to share that five AUA students majoring in data science, Susanna Avagyan (BSDS ‘22), Tatevik Jalatyan (BSDS ‘22), Mariam Hayrapetyan (BSDS ‘22), Arpi Hunanyan (BSDS ‘22) and Mher Movsisyan (BSDS ‘24), were contracted by the AUA Center for Business Research and Development (CBRD) to consult Safe YOU, a social enterprise targeting the prevention of violence against women through reporting and data visualization. The team was supervised by Karen Sarkavagyan, lecturer at the AUA Manoogian Simone College of Business and Economics (CBE).

“We kept the scope of the project flexible so the team could come up with creative solutions,” says Mariam Torosyan, founder and CEO of Safe YOU. “And we are quite satisfied with the dashboard enhancements that the group devised, given the time and budget constraints that we had. Basically, we communicated our mission and vision to them, and then gave them access to our App database, and asked them to visualize data that could help our customers, specifically international organizations and government entities engaged in policy-making.”

Avagyan (BSDS ‘22), who has received the 2021 Best Bachelor’s Student Award in the field of IT, led the team in this consulting project. “Aside from the technical execution of the project, it was important that we all realized how important Safe YOU’s mission is for society anywhere in the world,” reflects Susanna. “It is fulfilling to know that our work could materialize into a greater good. We did our best as a team, and it definitely added to our experience in both teamwork and in working on the real needs of real companies.” 

The main technology that the team used for data analysis was Python, which opens up perspectives for future machine learning algorithms envisioned by Safe YOU vision. The data analysis was conducted in compliance with strict data privacy principles. 

“This is CBRD’s third consulting project this year with students responsible for the execution,” says Sarkavagyan, who is also the industry liaison and collaboration coordinator at AUA. “We are very glad that this particular project was for a social venture. We are also pleased that the students got organized into a team themselves — all group members also are members of the Data Warriors Student Club at AUA, and the club has proven to be an excellent platform to pull talent through, especially for projects such as this. Considering that AUA is committed to generating more similar projects for our students, we have been building a strong culture of experiential and project-based learning.”

Founded in 1991, the American University of Armenia (AUA) is a private, independent university located in Yerevan, Armenia, affiliated with the University of California, and accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission in the United States. AUA provides local and international students with Western-style education through top-quality undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs, promotes research and innovation, encourages civic engagement and community service, and fosters democratic values.