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Indian-origin students win U.S. Soccer Case competition
The winning team—Sudarshan Prasanna, Manu Sankaran, and Aisha Abraham—advanced from a field of 100 entrants to the final round at Clark Atlanta University.
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Malvika Choudhary - Wed, 29, Oct 2025
- 15:15 EDT
- 23
Georgia Tech first-year students – Sudarshan Prasanna, Aisha Abraham, and Manu Sankaran – celebrate their victory in the U.S. Soccer Case Competition hosted at Clark Atlanta University. Submitted photo. / Georgia Tech News
A team with Indian-origin first-year students from Georgia Institute of Technology won the U.S. Soccer Case Competition, taking top honors among university teams from across Georgia.
The winning team—Sudarshan Prasanna, Manu Sankaran, and Aisha Abraham—advanced from a field of 100 entrants to the final round at Clark Atlanta University, where 15 finalists presented proposals to U.S. Soccer officials and marketing professionals.
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Their plan called for expanding the NCAA Men’s Division I Soccer Championship from 48 to 64 teams, regionalizing early rounds to reduce travel costs, and adopting a format modeled on college basketball’s “March Madness.”
Prasanna led the data modeling effort, Sankaran focused on strategy and presentation drawing on his consulting experience, and Abraham, an industrial design student, handled the visual design.
Judges said the team’s data-driven approach set it apart. Using television ratings, media revenue, and attendance data, the students built machine learning models that projected a $20 million net profit through new media rights and sponsorship deals over multiple years.
“When the judges announced our win, they mentioned that it was a clear implementation, backed by data-driven, numerically oriented facts. It’s not just about having cool ideas, but about supporting them with legitimate evidence and presenting them in ways everyone can understand,” Prasanna, a computer science and applied mathematics student told Georgia Tech News.
As winners, they will receive guaranteed internship interviews with the U.S. Soccer to continue developing their proposals.
Prasanna, who conducts computational modeling research at Georgia Tech and has worked on data-driven sports analytics projects, said he hopes to pursue a career in sports data science. He is pursuing a bachelor of science in computer science with a minor in Applied Mathematics.
Sankaran is an industrial engineering student at Georgia Tech and a consultant with Epic Intentions Consulting, where he works on data analytics projects for local non-profits and city agencies.
Abraham is studying industrial and product design at Georgia Tech and is a graduate of Pathways School Noida, specializing in visual communication and design.
U.S. Soccer CEO JT Batson said the competition reflects the federation’s effort to engage local academic talent following its move to Atlanta.
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