Three Bocconians Win Microsoft Big Data IoT Food Hackathon

TWO PHD IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT STUDENTS AND A SOON TO GRADUATEOF CLEAM ARRIVED TO THE END OF THE 48 HOUR MARATHON FOR PROGRAMMERS AND GOT TWO OF THE FOUR PRIZES

One CLEAM near-graduate and two PhD students in Business Administration and Management were amongst the winners of the latest Microsoft Big Data & IoT Food Hackathon. The contest took place in Milan, June 20-21. A hundred and fifty computer programmers, graphic designers and data scientists met at the Talent Garden to create projects related to the Expo 2015 central theme, “Feeding the planet, energy for life”. Their goal: use Microsoft tools such as the Azure platform to find innovative solutions in the agribusiness. The contest was part of the “Feeding the Accelerator” food and tech program promoted by the U.S.A pavilion. Divided into teams of four, they worked on one of these categories: Data Modeling, Data Visualization or Data & Internet of Things. At the end of the 48-hour marathon each category had a winner.
 
Alessandro Cordova and Simone Santamaria, the Bocconi PhD in Business Administration and Management students, gained a special award for excelling in both Data Modeling and Data Visualization categories. The Italian agro-food research centre PTP Science Park gave each team three data sets: the geolocation of 3,000 Moroccan goats, an animal that could have a key role in overcoming the problem of worldwide food scarcity; climate conditions of the areas where the animals live; a string of 50,000 genetic data for each goat. “We asked ourselves: if we do analyze its genetic data, can we predict where does every goat live? Once you discover the correlation between goat and ambience, you can increase productivity”. Alessandro and Simone soon understood the meaning of hackathon, which is an hack marathon. “We spent a sleepless night between Saturday and Sunday working on it. Gregorio Occhiogrosso and Gianfrancesco Aurecchia were the team members who took care of design and programming. The Bocconi PhD and the Emanuele Borgonovo’s Advanced Quantitative Methods for the Management Science Research course gave us a strong statistical background which was essential to win. The jury appreciated our storytelling presentation”.
 
Andrea Baroni, a Jeme student which is going to graduate in July, won in the Data Visualization category, but his team (Salvatore Difrancesco, Gianluca di Trani, Carlos Felipe Toro) has nearly broke up at the end of day one. “We met Saturday morning, we didn’t know each other. It wasn’t easy to manage a team of very different people. I was lucky enough to know how to deal with it thanks to all the teamworks I did at CLEAM. When a member left, we learned to rely on our strong points”. The team analyzed three variables – average humidity, temperature, daylight – and applied the findings to the United States. Their data visualization – a “Goat Finder” on an U.S. map – was the key to their success. “I relied on I’ve learned during the Alessandro Rezzani’s Strumenti di Business Intelligence in Azienda and the Lucio Benussi’s Automazione Excel con VBA courses. My thesis with Renata Trinca Colonel ‘Advantages of quantitative approaches in customer relationship management’ was important too. But it wasn’t easy at all. I looked around and saw many programmers, I didn’t expect to win. The message is: never think you’re disavantaged, don’t be afraid to compete”.

by Claudio Todesco