AIIS is an annual competition that was held by BRIN and Korika as a contribution to the development and utilization of AI-related technology in Indonesia. In it, there is a Datathon AI competition that aims to gather talented students in the AI field.

One of our reporters had the opportunity to interview Dimas and his team. When we asked what their motivation in enrolling in this competition is, they told us that they were interested in the AI field after listening to a presentation by the Informatics Student Association (HMIF) ITB during the major orientation period. When it comes to team building, before this they had participated in several competitions together so and they decided to stick with the same composition in this competition.

This Datathon AI competition is composed of two phases, the qualification, and final phases. In the qualification phases, the problem that the team needs to solve is predicting when will halve of the Indonesian population will be fully vaccinated. To solve this problem, they sought relevant data on the internet. Later, they predict their data using an AI model with time series forecasting capabilities. Specifically, they used the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA).

*Sources: Ditmawa ITB

Then for the final stage, the problem case that was assigned is to determine the optimum percentage of WFH (work from home) and WFO (work from office). In solving this case, Team Aurora, putting into account the health and economic aspects. Therefore, they wrote a paper titled "Determination of the Optimum WFO Percentage for Aggressive and Moderate Policies using Polynomial Regression and Linear Regression".

What makes the Aurora work interesting is that they composed mathematical formulas from their own analysis (not based on available theory). Furthermore, in this formula, the government can give its own weight to the variable according to its own objective. For example, if you want to emphasize more on the health aspect, the variable for health is increased while the variable for the economy is lowered. This also applies to the opposite.

For the competition strategy, they do not have a specific meeting schedule or weekly targets. The reasoning behind this is at the time of the competition, Dimas, Rio, and Rizky were having a busy orientation schedule. It's just that the three of them have the same commitment and motivation so that when they decided to meet, they always make progress. In addition to that, they often consulted with their more skilled senior.

When asked about impression, The Aurora Team answered that they were happy to participate and won this competition amid their hectic schedules. Rizky said that from this competition he realized that friends and communication are both important factors for a team. Because he fits with his team, he felt no communication barrier during the paper writing process.

ITB PR Reporter also asked Dimas, Rio, and Rizky to give a few messages to their fellow students. Rio said that if there is competition, just join it, because from a competition we will be 'forced' to learn new things that weren't taught in the class. Dimas agree with what Rio had said and added that "A Competition will not cost you anything. Even if we lose, we don't lose, but if we win, we get a prize".

However, slightly different from his colleagues, Rizky said, "A competition is not for everyone. If you're not interested that's okay. Most importantly, don't forget to explore yourself, but again, it doesn't have to be in a form of competition."

Reporter: Maria Khelli (Informatics, 2020)
Translator: Favian Aldilla R (Civil Engineering, 2019)