Written by David Drucker/FIU News
When Franklin Filho walked into the Miami Heat’s office at Caseya Center for what he thought was a three-week internship, he immediately felt the pressure.
“That was my first internship,” he recalls. “I kept thinking, what can I do to prove myself?”
This was my second internship for three weeks. That led to a full-time offer. Currently, Filho is a Junior Software Engineer at Miami HEAT and 601 Analytics (HEAT’s data and analytics division), working across front-end and back-end systems and mentoring two interns on new in-house tools that will soon be rolled out.
Filho’s rapid rise is not an outlier, but a reflection of how the growing partnership between FIU and one of the most forward-thinking teams in professional sports is reshaping the way talent is developed and deployed.
Developing human resources at the same speed as technology advances
In the age of artificial intelligence, slow and steady doesn’t work. Organizations looking to expand their offerings need people who can contribute quickly, adapt quickly, and think beyond traditional strategies.
For the Miami Heat, that need is becoming more important as the data analytics team expands its reach. In 2025 alone, the group served five leagues, 16 teams, and 23 venues. This goes far beyond its origins as an in-house HEAT operation.
HEAT found a solution close to home: partnering with FIU and its Break Through Tech Sprinternship™ program. This is a non-interview, paid micro-internship model where students are organized into teams and matched with employers to complete challenging projects.
“Given the short duration of the internship, students need to be fully committed from day one of their sprintership. At FIU, we prepare them with seven weeks of intensive technical and professional training to help them hit the ground running,” said Nimmi Arunachalam, FIU’s sprintership program director.
For HEAT, the model perfectly aligned with the team’s existing way of working.
“We have an ambitious product roadmap,” said Edson Crevecoeur, senior vice president of strategy and data analytics for the Miami Heat and co-founder and chief operating officer of 601 Analytics.
“When you combine talented students with real-world business needs, the results speak for themselves.”
business within business
601 Analytics began in 2019 as an internal effort to understand the increasing amount of data flowing through HEAT operations, from ticket scanning to product purchases.
After a few years, HEAT realized that it had built something other organizations needed as well. The company’s analytics team currently serves approximately 20% of the NBA, along with the league’s central office. The team focuses on business operations such as ticketing, sales, sponsorship, guest experience, marketing, and finance, rather than “Moneyball”-style player analysis.
“The industry now operates on data-driven insights, and AI is exponentially accelerating possibilities,” says Crevecoeur. “To maintain this pace, we need a pipeline of talent ready to leverage these tools.”
Rising tech talent in Miami
Just a few miles to the west, FIU’s School of Engineering and Computing has strengthened programs in computer science, data science, and artificial intelligence, preparing students for exactly this type of work.
The relationship between FIU and 601 Analytics didn’t begin with a formal pitch. It started in 2023 when Enio Maiale, senior director of software engineering at HEAT, received a master’s degree from FIU’s Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences.
“At this point in the AI era, we needed an update,” he says. “We wanted to use these technologies to make better decisions.”
It was a chance conversation with Arunachalam about FIU’s commitment to an innovative experiential learning model that impressed Maiale.
After seeing the skills FIU students demonstrated, he began advocating for the university internally as a source of talent. The sprintership model was fast-paced, production-oriented, and reflected the team’s unique development lifecycle.
This pipeline brought in talent from unexpected places.
From classroom to production
Just a few years ago, Gabriela Rodriguez, 25, never would have imagined where she is today.
She didn’t major in computer science and wasn’t a basketball fan. She majored in mathematics and worked in the healthcare field. But a summer program at FIU’s Break Through Tech hooked her on computing and changed her career forever. She changed her major to computer science and took the chance to join the Miami Heat sprintership cohort.
Rodriguez worked with teammates to help build predictive models using transaction data from HEAT’s online store to analyze which targeted promotions were most likely to resonate with specific customers.
“We had to use data to figure out the best coupons to offer to a particular customer based on their past purchases. This was a huge three-week challenge,” says Rodriguez.
She was brought back to complete a nine-week internship. Rodriguez’s colleagues developed two models and identified the one that performed better through rigorous testing.
Meanwhile, HEAT also discovered something. It’s about having new talent on the team. Once Rodriguez graduated from FIU, he was offered a full-time job.
common standards
The Miami Heat is famously characterized by a culture that promotes hard work, professionalism, and a team-first mentality.
FIU is guided by a similar ethos, said Matthew Jafarian, executive vice president of business strategy for the Miami Heat and co-founder of 601 Analytics.
“The cultures at FIU and 601 Analytics are incredibly aligned,” Jafarian said. “Curiosity, hunger and growth. These qualities are evident in every FIU student we have worked with.”
Mark Weiss, associate dean of the College of Engineering and Computing, said it’s important for the university to provide students with the best return on investment for their FIU experience.
“Our focus on opportunity and outcomes is a big reason why FIU is consistently ranked No. 1 in social mobility,” Weiss said.
“Through our collaborators like Break Through Tech, Miami HEAT, and 601 Analytics, we are focused on pairing great academics with real-world programming and instruction.”
Ultimately, this effort led to tangible results. Since last summer, eight FIU students have been accepted as interns. Two were employed full-time. And there is a growing pipeline of AI-enabled talent ready to help organizations scale.
Among the new hires is Rodriguez, a former math major who accepted HEAT’s job offer and now works at the cutting edge of business, technology and sports.
“Sometimes all you have to do is step in,” Rodriguez says.
Photo at the top of the post: Gabriela Rodriguez has earned a full-time role with the Miami Heat’s 601 Analytics after completing an intensive three-week sprint internship through FIU.
This article was created by FIU News and reposted here with permission.
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