AI Agent Innovation Takes Center Stage in This Year’s Competition
OTTAWA, ON, March 31, 2026 — MindBridge today announced the winners of its 2026 Data Science Challenge, held in partnership with Carleton University. As AI agents take on a growing role in how financial decisions are made and executed, traditional approaches to monitoring and control are struggling to keep pace. Systems are moving faster, operating more autonomously, and introducing new forms of risk that are difficult to detect after the fact.
This year’s MindBridge Data Science Challenge put that shift into practice. Over an eight-week period, undergraduate and graduate students built an intelligent agent that can translate natural language questions into SQL queries for a relational database.
Launched on January 28 with a lecture on Agentic AI, design patterns, and applications by Dr. Aras Kayvan, Senior Data Scientist at MindBridge, the challenge focused on building AI agents capable of operating within complex financial environments, mirroring the direction of modern finance systems.
Submissions were evaluated based on performance, creativity, innovation, and clarity of presentation. A panel of judges, including Sriram Subramanian (Carleton University), and Lakshika Girihagama, Louis de Thanhoffer de Volcsey, Nima Anvari, and Michael Bourassa ( MindBridge), assessed each project to ensure a balance of technical rigor and real-world applicability.
The 2026 Data Science Challenge winners are:
1st Place: Ansh Kakkar — Awarded a MacBook Pro
2nd Place: Mohamad Ghanem — Awarded an iPad Pro
3rd Place: Sam Minasyan — Awarded an iPad
In addition to physical prizes, each of the winners will also be offered an interview for a paid internship at MindBridge.
“The quality of work this year reflects how quickly AI agents are moving from theory into real-world application,” said Rachel Kirkham, Chief Technology Officer at MindBridge. “What stood out to me in this year’s challenge was, yes, the technical execution, but also the ability to apply these systems to complex financial problems and explain the outcomes clearly.”
“This challenge continues to give students a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of AI and finance,” said Olga Baysal, Director of the Institute for Data Science at Carleton University. “The level of innovation we saw this year demonstrates how prepared this next generation is to contribute to an increasingly AI-driven industry.”
MindBridge and Carleton University extend their congratulations to the winners and thank all participants for their creativity, dedication, and contributions.
About Carleton University
Carleton University is located in Ottawa, Canada. Founded in 1942, Carleton is a dynamic, research-intensive university with a proven commitment to teaching and learning. Carleton offers more than 170 undergraduate and graduate programs across a wide range of disciplines. Carleton’s location in Canada’s capital city gives our students unique opportunities to learn and work in a vibrant, multilingual and multicultural environment. Carleton has an international reputation for excellence in research and teaching, and our faculty are known for their dedication to student success. Learn more at https://carleton.ca/.
About MindBridge
MindBridge AI sets the standard for autonomous financial oversight. The platform analyzes 100% of transactions across enterprise systems of record to detect risk early, explain insights with clarity, and enable governed action. As AI becomes embedded across financial processes, controls weaken, and new risks emerge. MindBridge provides the independent oversight layer needed to maintain data integrity at scale. Trusted by organizations worldwide, MindBridge empowers audit and finance teams to move beyond sampling, strengthen controls, and operate with speed and confidence. For more information, visit www.mindbridge.ai