Published on: Monday, 17 November 2014

Teams from ten third level institutions compete using big data for prize worth €4,000
 
Students from all over the country came to AIB Bankcentre in Ballsbridge to take part in the first ever AIB Datahon, a full day of working on a dataset to build a predictive model. The winners were brothers Sam and Jeremy Bowles. Sam studies Computer Science in DIT and Jeremy studies Commerce in UCD.

On the day, students were asked to create a movie recommendation model based on 100,000 movie ratings from 1,000 users. The challenge was to build a movie recommendation system that would deploy similar techniques to Netflix or Amazon, such as “You may also like”. Participants were free to approach the problem in whatever way they choose.

Students travelled from all over the country with teams from University College Dublin, Dublin City University, Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork, NUI – Galway, NUI – Maynooth, Cork Institute of Technology, Dublin Institute of Technology, Blanchardstown Institute of Technology, and Letterkenny Institute of Technology.

Bernard Byrne was delighted to be able to present the winning team with €4,000 worth of tech equipment. The two runner up teams Kamil Orłowski and Matthew O'Neill from DIT who came 2nd, and Silvia Planella and Marcin Dziduch from CIT who came 3rd, each won tech equipment worth €1,000.

Speaking about the competition Silvia said "The competition was very interesting and challenging. We learnt a lot and it was great to apply what we have been studying in a real life setting."

Seamus Murphy, Chief Data Officer at AIB said “We were really impressed by the quality of the teams competing today. AIB hosted the Datathon to give Irish graduates an insight into our work at AIB and show case how we use to data to best understand what the customer needs and thus provide the best possible service.”

“The function of the Data team at AIB has changed a lot in the last two years. We have hired people from a variety of academic backgrounds from computer science and astrophysics and have broadened the scope of work across the bank. We would hope to see many of the great competitors we saw today, applying for our 2015 graduate programme.”

CIT Silvia Planella and Marcin Dziduch pictured with Bernard Byrne, Director of Personal, Business and Corporate Banking, AIB, and Seamus Murphy, Chief Data Officer, AIB.
Image Credit: Colm Mahady /  Fennell Photography