APU team, together with their mentor, receiving the mock cheque from Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) chief executive officer, Yasmin Mahmood (fifth from right) (Photo courtesy of MDeC)
Wed, 15th Dec – A team of students from Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation (APU), together with their mentor, Ms. Hema Latha Krishna Nair from the School of Computing & Technology (SCT), achieved a remarkable 1st Runner Up at the Big App Challenge 1.0, which was held on 15th December 2014 (Wednesday), at Le Meridien Hotel, KL. The team, comprising Level 3 Software Engineering students – Ian Coushanga, Breena Theseira, Liew Zhi Ying, Grace Tee and Lim Choon Yun, were the only student team that made it to the Top 10 of the competition – a truly amazing achievement given all the other teams comprised seasoned industry professionals, senior researchers and technopreneurs. The team walked away with prizes worth RM30,000, which include RM10,000 cash and RM20,000 worth of MDeC accelerator program.
Since their registration for the competition on 16th October, the team had been working hard on improving their knowledge in the Big Data field. They attended various workshops and brainstorming sessions, and had gone through sleepless nights prior to the submission of their project. The project developed by the team, the DAM-IT: Dam Water Level Management System, were based on public open data from Ministry of Health on Dengue Mortality and its affected areas, as well as a dataset from the Department of Meteorology concerning the rainfall distribution in Malaysia.
It was a remarkable success; and the students had surely obtained valuable experiences from the competition. “We are grateful that MDEC and Tentspark Sdn Bhd have given us this opportunity to project our ability in Big Data Analytics. Winning 2nd place gives us confidence that freshies like us are also equally competitive and prepared to meet the industrial needs in Big Data!” exclaimed the team after the announcement of the award.
