Co-organised by PolyU and Radica, “Big Datathon” – an annual hackathon event focusing on the application of big data, data analytics, and data science was successfully held at PolyU on 26 - 27 May. This competition gathered real business challenges and data from real companies for contestants to solve. It attracted over 150 university students, graduates, working professionals and startups. A team of three COMP students (Ka Yu Chan, Tsz Hin Chan and Cheuk Yin Wong) won the PolyU Champion Award with their project “Course Designer”.
On the first competition day, 43 teams of 2 to 5 were formed and each team selected one of the business challenges provided by PolyU, Radica and UBS respectively. By using fresh data and advanced tools, participants worked together in 24 hours to solve the data problems or pain points happening in the real business world. The team projects were evaluated by a panel of judges from academia and industry under four key criteria including quality of data crawling, creativity and innovation, demonstration of capability, and communication skills. Ten teams became finalists and competed for the PolyU / Radica / UBS Champion Awards, Best Data Hunter Award, Most Innovative Award and Best Presentation Award.
Big Datathon provides a great platform for data talents to put their technical knowledge into practice and on the other hand, for corporates to kick-off their big data projects and access to potential solutions.
