Hackers vs Hackers: WSU wins the NSSN DataHack
The Western Sydney University winners: Dewan Arun Singh, Amy Shao, Emma Seaman, Mohd Zubair Humza.
The Western Sydney University hackers became the champions of the NSSN DataHack hackathon held at CEBIT Australia from 29 to 31 October 2019. The award ceremony was opened by the NSW Minister for Better Regulation and Innovation, the Hon. Kevin Anderson MP.
“The hackathon is a brilliant initiative, they are going to produce products that could end up becoming commercialised,” said NSSN Co-Director Professor Justin Gooding.
The Western Sydney University (WSU) students — the winners of the $5,000 NSSN DataHack prize — competed against five other university teams to develop a product for incentivising drivers’ mobility behaviour in peak hours traffic whilst protecting the users’ privacy.
The five competing teams were from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), the University of Sydney, the Australian National University (ANU), the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), the University of Newcastle and Macquarie University.
The DataHack judging panel included Dr Susan Pond, NSSN Chair; Dr Ian Oppermann, NSW Chief Data Scientist; Dr Neil Brittliff, Microsoft; Ms Shona Chisholm, Here Technologies; Ms Nicole Noye, GoGet Carshare; and Mr Murray Baker, AllNET Technologies and Mezrit.
“All the participants in the teams gave the judges a very difficult job. And in my view and in the judges’ view, you’re all winners,” said Dr Susan Pond before announcing the winning team. “The challenges that you addressed makes the collective of all of the ideas very important. I think together they will make a difference to Sydney traffic.”
“If you look at success, you need a combination of strong academic input, but also realistic commercial input. We’re asking the teams to consider what are the commercial aspects of what they are looking at,” said the NSSN DataHack judge, Mr Murray Baker. “So it actually gives them an opportunity to connect with all the different parts of the industry.”
After three days of intensive hacking, each team pitched their solutions and products to the judges in the DataHack award ceremony. The pitching session was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Ms Angela Chan, the CEO of Hackathons Australia.
“All the teams came up with a solution that was a prototype or something that was working,” said Ms Chan. “The future is very bright for these people.”
The NSSN DataHack was sponsored by the NSW government’s Data Analytics Centre (DAC), GoGet, Here Technologies and Microsoft.
The hackers received a generous amount of support from the NSSN DataHack Marshal, Dr Zhitao Xiong and mentors from different organisations such as Microsoft, GoGet, Here Technologies and DAC across all three days.
The NSSN is a consortium of the nine leading universities across NSW & ACT: UNSW, The University of Sydney, UTS, Macquarie University, Western Sydney University, University of Newcastle, University of Wollongong, Australian National University and the University of Canberra.
Funded by the NSW government, the NSSN brings together expertise in academia, industry and government to position NSW and Australia as a global leader in smart sensing innovation.
To read more about the challenge and the creation of the NSSN DataHack at CEBIT Australia 2019, click here.
Media: Shahrzad Abbasi — 0466548145
The NSSN DataHack at CEBIT Australia 2019, Shona Chisholm, Angela Chan, Nicholas Haskins, Dr Susan Pond, the Hon. Kevin Anderson MP, Nicole Noye, Murray Baker.
The NSSN DataHack booth at CEBIT Australia 2019.