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Hack2O

The Graduate Researchers in Data (GRiD) club at UMass Amherst is hosting our annual Data Science Hackathon! For 2017, we’ll be exploring water contamination datasets, especially as it relates to lead contamination in Flint, MI. This year we’re happy to be co-organizing this event with Nabanita De of Microsoft Student Partner.

The competition is open to all graduate students. Prizes will be given to the winners, generously sponsored by AmherstWorks and Microsoft Student Partner.

Hall of Fame

All of the projects that were presented at Hack2O were interesting enough to give our judges a hard time. The following teams stood out:

  • Overall Winner — Andrew Wang (MIT Rejects)
  • Best Use of Azure ML — Tangxin Jin, Shujian Liu, Huan Chen (Pizza-Pita)
  • First Time Hackers — Ajay Kumar (AK)
  • Best Woman Hacker — Azka Javaid (Lil ‘Herst), from Amherst College.

Materials:

  • Slides from all the presentations:
  • Photos (more to be added):

When and where

Start: Friday, Feb. 24; 5:30 PM

End: Sunday, Feb. 26, 3:00 PM

Location: LGRT 1634

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Submission

Please email a PDF of your slides to [email protected]. The teams will be judged on their presentation. We estimate about 10 minutes per team per presentation.

In the spirit of open source, we request that you make your code publicly available (GitHub, BitBucket, etc.), so that others may find it helpful. We will put up the all the links to code that we receive for Hack2O.

Details

At this year’s annual hackathon, we will be exploring water contamination data, especially as it relates to lead contamination in Flint, MI.

Participants will be competing in teams to:

  • design a project question
  • import and analyse data
  • build a model to answer their project question
  • use data visualization to explain their results
  • present to a panel of judges and peers.

Data:

Prizes:

  • Overall winner, sponsored by Amherst Works.
  • Microsoft Student Partner sponsored prizes:

Judges

Dr. Krista Gile, Associate Professor of Statistics, UMass Amherst.

Note: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Dr. Krista Gile wasn't able to join us on Sunday. Professor Michael Lavine took her place as a judge.

Hassaan Khan, PhD Candidate, Environmental Engineering and Water Resouces Engineering, UMass Amherst.

Roy Adams, PhD Candidate, College of Information and Computer Sciences, UMass Amherst.

Nabanita De, MSc. Student, College of Information and Computer Sciences, UMass Amherst. Represented the Microsoft Student Partner Group.

Schedule

Friday, Feb. 24

| 5:30 PM | Arrive to LGRT 1634, settle in, grab some food. | | 5:45 PM | Mythreyi Krishnan from AmherstWorks, introduce prizes. | | 6:00 PM | Nabanita De of Microsoft Student Partners, introduce prize. | | 6:15 PM | Dataset Release! Presentation on Flint, MI by researcher Joe Goodwill. | | 6:30 PM | "Hackathons 101" presentation by Nabanita, followed by Team Formation session. | | Midnight | Room closes. |

Saturday, Feb. 25

| 8:00 AM | LGRT 1634 opens, hacking commences. | | 8:30 AM | Breakfast and coffee. | | Noon | Lunch. | | 6:00 PM | Dinner. | | Midnight | Room closes. |

Sunday, Feb. 26

| 8:00 AM | LGRT 1634 opens. | | 8:30 AM | Breakfast. | | Noon | Lunch. | | 1:00 PM | Project presentations. | | 2:30 PM | Judges decision-making. | | 2:45 PM | Winners announced, prize. | | 3:00 PM | Wrap-up. |

FAQ

  • Are teams outside UMass allowed?

    • ALL teams are welcome, although we are focused primarily on graduate students from the Five Colleges. Unfortunately, at this time, we cannot provide accomodations or travel reimbursements for out-of-town teams. We apologise for the inconvenience.

  • How large can teams be?

    • We expect teams of maximum size 3.

  • What if I can't find enough team members?

    • There will be a team formation session. It is a great opportunity to meet and work with new people and throw around interesting ideas.

  • Are we expected to stick around all day?

    • The hackathon space is available for the entire weekend, along with organizers being present for technical support. It is totally fine to get hacking from home or wherever - just turn up in person for the final decisions on Sunday.

  • There will be food, right?

    • Meals will be provided throughout the weekend, including dinner on Friday, breakfast/lunch/dinner on Saturday, and breakfast/lunch on Sunday.

  • What if I am just starting out with data science or hackathons?

    • Registration is open to any graduate student from the Five Colleges, regardless of experience with data science. Undergraduates may compete by invitation (please mail us if you have doubts).

Contact

Previous Hackathons

Acknowledgements

GRiD acknowledges the support of the following organizations, on-and-off campus, without which Hack2O wouldn't have taken off.

ACK

Additionally, we would like to thank:

  • Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering Joe Goodwill of Saint Francis University, for providing his expertise with water data and providing us with a clean dataset.
  • AmherstWorks, for supporting the hackathon, giving prizes to the best team.