Microsoft India has announced the winners of the 24 hour
hackathon held as part of the first Machine Learning and Data Sciences
(MLnDS) Conference. Team Builders won the grand prize,
while Eavesdroppers and NHacks emerged as the
first and second runners up respectively by creating applications to address
challenges in the field of agriculture, call center management and human
behavior. The hackathon invited students and early-stage developers to
work in teams to build intelligent, working applications with the help of
Microsoft Cognitive Services, Microsoft Bot Framework and Microsoft R Services.
The top three teams won cash prizes worth Rs. 50,000, Rs. 40,000
and Rs. 30,000 for developing solutions fulfilling parameters on design,
innovation, foreseeable impact and marketability. In addition to the cash
awards, the student participants from the winning teams will also be offered
interviews for internships and full time positions at Microsoft India (RnD)
Pvt. Ltd.
Speaking on the occasion, Anil Bhansali, Managing
Director, Microsoft India (RnD) Pvt. Ltd. said, “Microsoft has the
vision, strategy and talent to democratize data and machine learning and use it
to realize our mission to empower every individual and organization on the
planet to achieve more. The hackathon was designed to spark curiosity among
diverse talent to develop applications using our services and demonstrate the
versatility and potential of using the platform. It has also shown us how
Microsoft’s APIs could help scale ideas with global relevance in a very short
time.”
The winning teams showcased their innovative thinking, technical
skills and creative solutions to address everyday challenges. Team
Builders created a cognitive model to help farmers to identify what to
grow based on soil, weather and other parameters while Team
Eavesdroppers created a dashboard for call center management which
analyzes audio files and derives actionable insights for employee assessment
and training related questions. TeamNHacks, developed a
cognitive system that detects if individuals are suffering from depression by
conducting a sentiment analysis basis the tweets of the individual extracted
from Twitter. According to the sentiments extracted, notification is sent to
the guardian or doctor of the individual.
Over 800 participants from across India expressed interest in
participating in the hackathon of whom 80 participants were shortlisted. At the
event, 18 teams from all over the country comprising students and developers
battled it out in the intense hackathon to create applications. 15 senior
machine learning and technology experts from Microsoft who have built
intelligent services using Microsoft tools mentored the teams throughout the
competition. A range of ideas including how to tackle college bullying,
accessibility for the hearing impaired and a travel app were judged by a jury
comprising Microsoft and industry experts.
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