IISc hosts Microsoft's first student data science hackathon

Microsoft, in collaboration with Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru, concluded the first-ever Data Science Student Challenge (DSSC), a 24-hour global hackathon series, on Saturday.

The hackathon was inaugurated on January 29 as a part of Pravega 2016, the annual tech festival by the IISc. The hackathon, which witnessed participation by close to 200 students, showcases Microsoft’s commitment to boost the ecosystem for data scientists in India by giving students the opportunity to learn and test their data analytical skills.

As part of the hackathon, students accessed open government data and derived insights from that dataset, using the power of data analytics. Along with the students, a team of senior Microsoft mentors were present onsite to support and guide participants to create solutions based on predictions from the identified issues.

The hackathon generated over 50 ideas that could help build digital solutions to address the socio-economic issues in the country and accelerate the pace of the government’s Digital India programme.

Amog Mannekote, Tanmay Chinchore and Abhilash K from M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MSRIT), Bengaluru, were recognised as the winners of the challenge for prediction analysis on diabetes in Indian women. G Arun Kumar and Aravind Sundaresan from People’s Education Society Institute of Technology (PESIT) Bengaluru, South Campus, won the second prize for prediction analysis on heart diseases, and Amleshwar Kumar, Indranil Bhattacharya, Raghuram D Bharadwaj, Shreyas S and Swapnil Dhama from IISc won the third prize for predicting mortality rates of patients in ICU. The winning teams were rewarded with a cash prize of Rs 50,000, Rs 25,000 and Rs15,000, respectively. Professor Yogesh Simmhan, Assistant Professor, Department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS), IISc, says the demand for data scientists is high. “There is a critical need to address the talent gap, both in data science research and its practice. The recent creation of the Department of Computational and Data Sciences, the Big Data public lecture series, and new data science and analytics courses are some of these efforts. I am pleased that IISc’s Pravega technical fest has partnered with Microsoft to host its first global Data Science Students Challenge in India at our campus.”