EY NextWave Data Science Challenge 2019 raises Smart City as the main theme and organized by Ernst & Young, a multinational firm headquartered in London. This annual competition is the first to be organized in Indonesia. “This event is an international competition, but prizes are given to winners from each country,” Ilham explained. He also explained that the competition is available both bachelor and graduate students all over Indonesia. This makes the competition challenging for Ilham and his team.

As the name implies, the competition challenge the participants to process big data of anonymous geo-location of Atlanta, Georgia, and the USA on October 2018. From those data, participants should make machine learning model that help local authorities to understand the trip of their citizens when they do activities all day. “The aim is to formulate solution that can hel local authorities to anticipate disturbance, make real-time decisions, desing new service, and reshape infrastructure to make cities as smart as the citizens,” Ilham said.

Their interest in data science and in competing with people from all over the world is the main reason for Ilham and his team to compete in EY NextWave Data Science Challenge 2019. They feel helped “All campaigns are required to use Phyton, hence it is really helpful for Informatics students,” he said.

The competition began with online competition on April 2019 and concluded with finalist presentation phase on 15th may 2019. That journey leads to them winning the 1st place and getting internship offer from Ernst & Young. Ilham said the competition is valuable because participants are pushed to think creatively in data processing and machine learning model. “Next we want to learn more about data science or machine learning and its application,” Ilham concluded.

Reporter: Irfan Ibrahim (Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering 2016)