APU bags all three academic awards at National Big Data Challenge

Kuala Lumpur, 21 December 2016: 3 student teams from Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation (APU) attained all of the top 3 awards, as they emerged as the Champion, 1^st Runner Up and 2^nd Runner Up award winners of the Academic Track of Big App Challenge 3.0. The results were announced at the awards ceremony, which was held at Hilton KL Sentral on the 9^th of December 2016.

The competition was organized by the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), in line with its efforts to encourage and increase the adoption of Big Data Analytics across all sectors in the country. Through the challenge, MDEC provided a platform for the nation’s brightest application developers to tap into the power of Big Data to solve socio-economic problems.

Participants in the semi-finals of the challenge came from various hackathons nationwide, which were organized by educational institutions and members of the industry. In August, the Asia Pacific Center of Analytics (APCA) organized the APU Data Science Week & the APU Big Data Week Hackathon at its campus in Technology Park Malaysia, Bukit Jalil.

The multi-level challenge took place over several months, in which participants gained advancement into the Semi Finals and Grand Finals after several rounds of ideas and prototype presentations, workshops and debate sessions from the panel of judges, who were appointed by MDEC.

The winning team from APU stood out among all participants with the project, Affinity Analysis and Prediction (AAP), which aims to reduce university drop-out rates by identifying students’ strengths and interests through data analytics.

The team comprises Chin Koh Shian, Dickson Pang Yee Sheng, Hiew Ming An and Manigandran Raamanathan; they walked away with a cash prize of RM10,000.00.

In addition, two more projects from APU teams, WG - Movie Theatre Advertising System using Analytics, and Superlon – Analytics System that reduces the risk of underweight babies bagged the 1^st Runner Up and 2^nd Runner Up awards of the Academic Track at the Big App Challenge 3.0 respectively.

“We are very delighted to know about our victory; but what overwhelmed us the most was the moment when we knew that our friends from other teams also won the two other awards! It’s all three awards for us – it’s amazing!” said the winning team, as they received the award from Dr. Karl Ng Kah Hou, MDEC Innovation Capital Director.