MSc in Computing and Data Analytics

David Sobey Innovation in Retail and Services Centre and Payzant Home Hardware Hackathon 2019 was organized by the MScCDA. It was a three day event and the winners walked away with a prize money of 3000 CAD!
The students tackled the problem of inventory management and increasing the sales of the products for the data provided by the Payzant team. There were a number of judges and mentors from different industry organizations who guided the students and assessed their business solutions.

IBA Challenge 2019! Both MScCDA finalist teams walked away with third and fifth places for a total of $10,000 and were the top two Canadian teams at IBA challenge. The other winners were from Hong Kong, Belgium, and Spain.
A hearty congratulations for our teams and all the finalists of the competition!

The students from the MScCDA program and the MTEI (Master of Technology Entrepreneurship and Innovation) program got together to celebrate the Chinese New Year as well as the graduation of the 2017 cohorts of both the programs.

The Directors of both the programs congratulated the graduates with their welcome speeches while many of the recent graduates shared their journey and experiences working in the industry.

A number of alumni and industry peers were also present and the students got to interact with professionals from the technology and management domains.

The Innovative Designs for Accessibility (IDeA) student competition aims to inspire students to use their creativity to develop innovative, cost-effective and practical solutions to accessibility-related issues resulting in communities that are more accessible for persons with disabilities.

The students divided into teams and and started on a a persona to identify the problems. They reached out to people with similar persona to understand the problem statement and brainstormed for the solutions.

The presentations were exceptional and were lauded by the professors and industry mentors who were overseeing the competition.

The BA/QA workshop was organized by the Department of MScCDA on December 15th, 2018. Practice Leaders and Senior Business Analysts and Quality Assurance preofessionals from IBM were invited for the hands on training workshop.

The students got a detailed understanding of how the BA and QA teams tackle client problems at IBM. They also had a scenario based assignment at the end of the workshop to work on.

Five teams consisting of more than 15 students from MSc CDA braved the unfamiliar freezing temperatures to participate in UNB Data Visualization Competition at UNBF.
Team BrainHack:
Narasimha Rao Durgam
Sunil Padikar
Sri Akhil Reddy Kovvuri
Sonam Vadsaria
won third place in presentation and third place in infographics. Congratulations!
These students have been in Canada for barely two months, but insisted on making the journey even when we were unable to chaperone them. Sky is the limit when the conditions become more familiar and favorable. Looking forward to an exciting academic year ahead!

Interested competitors can learn more about, and submit an application for, the Opioid Data Challenge:

The Opioid Data Challenge Propose and test novel data sources and methodologies that can be combined with existing data to measure opioid overdoses in a community.

Students in the Master of Science in Computing & Data Analytics (MSc CDA) program at Saint Mary’s University developed the top three innovations at the recent Employment & Social Development Canada (ESDC) Hackathon.

Hosted at Saint Mary’s University in partnership with the Government of Canada, the ESDC Hackathon challenged participants to generate data-driven, creative ideas to help improve service delivery to low-income Canadians. The top three teams’ innovations addressed a variety of barriers to access, including wait times and lack of awareness of programs and services.

1st place - “Near Services”
Near Services is a platform that could improve access to ESDC services by helping individuals find information about benefits and programs relevant to them. “Near Services” is designed to be accessed online or at a variety of accessible locations, including schools, bus stops, and libraries.

Team members:
Rodolfo Garcia Barrantes
Olugbenro Selere
Mohannad Hameed
Daune Oliver

2nd place – “Golden Maple”
Golden Maple is an internet-based “decision tree” app designed to help individuals understand and access relevant programs and services.

Team members:
Jinal Salvi
Abhiraj Suryawanshi
Ranjit Mishra
Sankalp Bhagat
Florisha Taneja

3rd place – “Richer-Life System”
Richer-Life System is an internet-based app that could shorten wait times for ESDC services by prioritizing services based on an individual’s needs.

Team members:
Meghana Chillal
Navjot Kaur
Zhengyang Ma
Olufunto Akinyemi

The genesis of the Hackathon came from the mission of Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) to build a stronger and more inclusive Canada, to support Canadians in helping them live productive and rewarding lives, and to improve the quality of life for all Canadians. ESDC partnered with Saint Mary’s University’s MSc CDA to gather new ideas and seek expertise from the post-secondary sector.

“At Saint Mary's, we recognize the importance of working with our government partners on our shared goals, the betterment of our communities and our country,” said Saint Mary’s President Dr. Robert Summerby-Murray. “We are very proud to partner with the Government of Canada to host this event. I look forward to seeing the innovation in service delivery that will come as a result of this competition.”

The ESDC Hackathon, which was held at Saint Mary’s University on May 4 to 6, was open to current undergraduate and graduate students and to those who graduated in the past 12 months.

On April 15th to 18th we proudly hosted our third annual hackathon and it was, again, a great success! For this year's hackathon, we proudly collaborated with Atlantic Lottery Corporation (ALC), David Sobey Centre for Innovation in Retailing and Services, and MacQuarries Pharmasave. Participants had the option to choose to work on and help our partners with their key business questions. Each team was supported by a group of industry professionals. After three days, the teams came up with different ideas and machine learning models that helped our partners have a better understanding of their current status and opportunities for business growth. With a tough decision our judges from IBM, CGI, our partners and a number of Halifax start-ups recognized the hard work of the winning teams -who received $5000 in prizes.

The winning teams were –
Fatima Parveen, Maroof Rahman, Sahil Behl, Zhengyang Ma;

Abdelrahman S. Hassan, Preeti Mohare, Meenal Shah;

Florisha Taneja, Yudhvir Singh, Sankalp Bhagat, Wahid Tausif Maruf;

Abhiraj Suryawanshi, Jinal Salvi, Ranjit Mishra, Amrit Singh;

Narendran Kumar, Karthik Padmanabhan, Lourdes Roashan, Yifan Yin

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Employment and Social Development Canada Hackathon In the spirit of collaboration and innovation, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) has partnered with Saint Mary’s University’s Master of Science in Computing and Data Analytics program to host a hackathon. The hackathon will take place May 4-6; and will have a theme of improving ser...

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