Melbourne University holds data scientist hackathon

Earlier this month, Microsoft partnered with the University of Melbourne and CISSA (Computing and Information Systems Student Association) to hold the Melbourne Data Science Student Challenge.

This event marks the final leg of the global series of data science hackathons hosted by Microsoft with Universities around the world.

Hao Le, President of CISSA, teamed up with senior lecturer Dr. Ben Rubinstein, the Old Engineering School at the University of Melbourne to manage the event which took place over the weekend of April 30^th and May 1^st. Over 130 students from universities all over Melbourne spent all night hacking through a set of Australian Government data with the aim to develop outcomes to improve the way of life for Australians across housing, health and green living.

Microsoft hosted data science and visualisation workshops using Azure Machine Learning and Power BI part of Cortana Intelligence Suite and Microsoft staff were on hand to mentor teams throughout the event. It was a great opportunity for both students and Microsoft to learn from each other.

The judging panel consisted of Andrew Salladoray, Data Technologies director at Cushman & Wakefield as well as University of Melbourne faculty member Dr. Masud Moshtaghi.

The 3 winning teams (all from the University of Melbourne) were:

1. First Prize: SafeCycle Bobby Koteski, Daniel Porteous, Jun Yuan Liu and Karen Zheng
2. Second Prize: Data Innovators David Sebastian Amores Arellano, Maria Veroniva Torres Pena, Bolivar Alejandro Chiriboga Ramon
3. Third Prize: L^3C Fei Liu, Weihao Cheng, Yitong Li and Yuan Li

Tags: Azure Machine Learning, Cortana Intellegince Suite, data scientist, Microsoft, Power BI, University of Melbourne