Math students named finalists in Berkeley AI Hackathon

Waterloo team leverages AI and machine learning to develop a model that has the potential to reduce carbon emissions from transportation by up to 18 percent

By Melodie Roschman

Faculty of Mathematics

A team of undergraduate Computer Science students placed in the top eight at a recent AI Hackathon with “Skyline,” a project that uses demographic data and machine learning to simulate cities and use these patterns to optimize its transit infrastructure.

The four students – Rajan Agarwal (Software Engineering), Elijah Kurien (Software Engineering), Ishaan Dey (Software Engineering) and Joshua Yan (Computer Science) – were able to attend the hackathon, which took place from June 22 to 24 at the University of California – Berkeley, thanks to sponsorship from the Math Endowment Fund. “We had two goals,” Agarwal says: “to represent Waterloo on an international stage, and to learn more about the connections between machine learning, math and calculus.”

The friends, who are currently doing co-op terms with tech companies in Berkeley, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Toronto, are united by their passion for AI, and their desire to use the technology responsibly to make people’s lives better.

When it came time to decide on a project, the team realized quickly that they had to prioritize their values to be successful. “At first, we were asking what was going to win, but then we realized that was the wrong mindset,” Agarwal says.

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