Computer Information Technology Students Win First Prize at Data Science Hackathon

March 4, 2020

three computer information technology (CIT) students won first prize at the 3rd Annual Data Science Hackathon hosted by St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana

A team of three computer information technology (CIT) students won first prize at the 3rd Annual Data Science Hackathon hosted by St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. Representing Purdue University Northwest were Minghao Zhu, Youzhe Song and Ruilin Wang, College of Technology international students from China.

The Hackathon, held from February 28 to 29, is a competition for college student teams tasked with solving data science problems with a 24-hour time limit. This year’s competition was centered around “Recommender Systems” aimed at predicting an individual’s rating or preference for a given.

Using a portion of data collected about the preferences for a list of 200 movies and TV shows, the student teams worked to create a “Recommender System” that will then be tested for accuracy on the remaining portion of the data.

A total of 16 teams from 15 colleges and universities participated in this year’s competition, among which are Saint Mary’s College, University of Notre Dame, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Indiana University-Bloomington, DePaul University, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Professor Keyuan Jiang, Department Chair, Computer Information Technology and Graphics (CITG), mentored the team in preparation for the competition. The CITG Department offers Bachelor of Science degree programs in Computer Information Technology, Computer Information Technology with a concentration in Cybersecurity, and Computer Graphics Technology.

CIT faculty members in PNW’s College of Technology continue to show their expertise in data science by securing federal grants, offering graduate courses, advising graduate directed projects and undergraduate senior projects, winning prizes in PNW Days of Discovery, publishing in prestigious journals and conferences, as well as authoring on deep machine learning.
For more information about the Computer Information Technology program please contact the CITG Department at (219) 989-2035 or cit@pnw.edu.