More than a hundred students, including 20+ data science graduate students, spent the weekend working in teams learning to detect fraud as part of the inaugural Scotiabank Data Science Discovery Days competition.
The event, which took place virtually and in Mathematics 3 from January 20th to January 22nd, invited teams of students from across campus to analyze large amounts of data in a project that mimics the real world work they would do in data science careers.
“Scotiabank and the University of Waterloo share a passion for innovation,” says Yannick Lallement, Scotiabank’s Vice President for Corporate Functions Analytics and AI/ML Solutions. “We are pleased to partner with UW on programs that encourage students to engage with applied data and analytics. The enthusiasm, creativity, and technical skills that UW brought to this challenge impressed me a great deal.”
At the end of the weekend, teams submitted their slide decks and write-ups, with the strongest submissions being chosen to present to a panel of judges. The teams were judged not just on the strength of their data analysis but also on their general critical thinking and presentation design. Ultimately, Scotiabank gave away $8000 in prize money: $2000 to the first prize winners, two second prizes of $1500, and three third prizes of $1000.
Special congratulations and shoutout to the first place team, including one of our own MDSAI students:
Zero to Infinity: Rithika Shivakumar (Masters of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence), Yaxian Alex Bie (MMath Computer Science), Austing Dong (BMath Computer Science), Joe Yu (Software Engineering), and Sarah Wilson (BMath Computer Science)