After an intensive five-day learning bootcamp, Olajide Abdulrazzaq Folarin from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State; Sadiq Aderinto and Stanley Obumneme Dukor, both of the University of Lagos, jointly won the first Inter-Campus Machine Learning competition.
Sponsored by Bluechip Technologies and organised by Data Science Nigeria, the three winners individually earned the highest score for machine learning algorithm development.
The bootcamp was facilitated by 11 visiting international experts in artificial intelligence, five online tutors and 15 Nigerian-based business leaders.
More than 10,000 students from 95 campuses participated in the four-stage competition.
It included a pre-qualification pre-study, a quiz, a Kaggle competition and a validation call. The top 85 students competed at the five-day all-expenses-paid bootcamp at the Peninsula Resort, Lekki-Ajah, Lagos, from 10-14 October 2018.
At the bootcamp, the students were immersed in intensive sessions of theoretical learning, use case applications, face-to-face teaching, virtual online classes, and a hands-on hackathon using the newly launched Zindi platform for real-time model evaluation.
Data scientists from leading global institutions including Google’s AI Lab, GitHub, MIIA and Bankable Frontiers Associate, USA facilitated the sessions. Leading executives from the Nigerian banking, telecommunications, energy, and investment sectors shared their invaluable contextual insights with the students.
The Inter-Campus Machine Learning competition strives to increase Nigeria’s experience and expertise in data science and to enhance the opportunities and employability of Nigerian students through an incentivised exposure to advanced world-class knowledge.
The bootcamp included participants from all six geopolitical zones of Nigeria.
In his welcome speech, the convener, Data Science Nigeria, Mr. Bayo Adekanmbi said: “In our quest to play big in the Artificial Intelligence space, we must raise our game and combine the best of theoretical knowledge and real use cases with solution orientation, hence our tutorial approach of having world-class experts from leading AI centres in the world and local business leaders at the bootcamp.”
Co-founder of Bluechip Technologies Limited, Olumide Soyombo, shared Bluechip’s 10-year story and inspired the participants about the possibilities of artificial intelligence and how the students could leverage their knowledge to become technology entrepreneurs.
