UNIST Students Distinguished Themselves in National Data Science Competitions!

UNIST students have distinguished themselves in national competitions by addressing a number of social and economic problems with the use of big data.

■ Tacking the Challenges of COVID-19 with the Use of Big Data in the Financial Sector

UNIST has announced that Team Bull, consisting of Mina Kang (Department of Industrial Engineering), Minji Lee (Department of Mathematical Sciences), and SouYoon Lee (Department of Computer Science and Engineering) has been honored with the CEO Award of Shinhan Card at the 2021 Financial Data Contest.

Hosted by the Financial Security Institute, the competition was sponsored by the Financial Services Commission and major domestic financial companies. It was conducted in a manner, in which participants come up with creative problem-solving approaches, utilizing big data in the financial sector. Besides, the competition was open to anyone with bright ideas.

Team Bull received excellent reviews for clustering businesses that were seriously affected by the pandemic, developing sales prediction models for each business to establish standards for government support, and proposing ways to develop financial products and attract customers. In this competition, seven outstanding teams were selected and awarded, and the bull team was selected here. Along with a prize of KRW 3 million, the team will receive preferential benefits when applying for employment at the Financial Security Agency and Korea Investment & Securities.

■ Predicting Walk-off Homer with Big Data! 

UNIST has announced that Team Three-Run Walk-Off Homer, consisting of SooHyeok Kim (Department of Industrial Engineering), Yeram Kim (Department of Industrial Engineering), and Sehwa Jeong (Department of Business Administration) has been honored with the NIA President Award at the 2021 Big Contest.

Hosted by the National Information Society Agency (NIA), the purpose of this competition is to discover and nurture big data talents. It is conducted in a manner, in which participants analyze real-world data, produced by companies, such as Shinhan Card, SK Telecom, and GS Retail, and come up with ways to utilize them. This year, about 1,300 teams participated. There were only 56 winning teams, with a total prize of 126.5 million won delivered to these winning teams.

The three students are affiliated with the Service Engineering and Knowledge Discovery Lab within the Department of Industrial Engineering at UNIST. During the competition, the team carried out a study that predicts a player’s record based on the ball tracking data. In particular, they worked out a new classification system that supplements the existing methods for determining ‘Barrel’ based on machine learning. Utilizing this system, the team came up with a prediction model for forecasting the record and performance of each batter.