The first European Big Data Hackathon will be held from 13th to 15th March 2017 in Brussels, where Croatia will be represented by three scientists from IN2data Ltd - Assistant Professor Robert Kopal PhD, Leo Mršić PhD and Igor Kaluđer MSc. They have been chosen by jury among many teams that answered the public call of the Croatian Bureau of Statistics. Hackathon will be part of the conference “New Techniques and Technologies for Statistics (NTTS)“.
Data Hackathon is a sort of intense competition which includes solving tasks from the domain of data science and development of prototypes of complex analytical products.
The first European Big Data Hackathon is based on five set goals: solving problems from the statistics domain using algorithms for data manipulation, identifying best of class European data scientists, promoting and encouraging partnership among research institutions and private sector and use of innovative products and tools that include advanced visualization, with the aim of encouraging use of the most diverse data in the society.
National bureaus for statistics of European Union member countries nominated total of 32 teams that will deal with efficiency of data science use by answering current challenges facing Europe. Data samples that will be used will be prepared by initiative described as priorities of the European Commission organized in ten areas. In the course of two days the best European data scientists will develop a prototype of the solution directed towards one given topic. Criteria of the successful performance will be evaluated by relevance, methodology, information quality, innovative approach and possibility of use.
“We are glad that being a team which has been working successfully on projects in this area for many years, we can use our knowledge to defend colours of the national team. So far we have initiated numerous different products that popularise data science and are happy to participate in the hackathon through experience exchange and completion,“ said Leo Mršić PhD.
“We are very glad that the prominent scientist and expert Krešimir Žnidar PhD is going to participate in our team preparations“ said Assistant Professor Robert Kopal.
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