The NUS Business Analytics Centre (BAC) partnered with the Energy Market Company (EMC) to host the inaugural NUS-EMC Analytics Innovation Challenge. The competition saw 19 student and alumni teams from across NUS compete over eight weeks to find data-driven solutions to improve real-world energy market issues.
“We collaborate regularly with industry partners in analytics innovation challenges such as the one with EMC. They allow NUS students to showcase their ideas and capabilities to solve real-world business challenges, as well as the opportunity to network with seniors and industry professionals,” said Associate Professor James Pang, Co-Director, NUS Business Analytics Centre.
A stellar win!
For the final on 28 April, he teams were tasked to develop an energy price forecasting model using datasets, artificial intelligence, and other predictive analytics.
Comprising seven representatives from EMC and BAC, the judging panel assessed the teams based on factors such as creativity, feasibility and reliability.
Impressed by the market-readiness of Team Stellar’s concept, they awarded the cash prize of $5000 to MSBA alumni (Class of 2019) Stella Yi, Joshua Toh, Bertrand Xiao, Tay Jun Liang, Wee Li Yen and Steven Tseng.
Team Stellar’s solution used artificial intelligence technology called national language generation to create a market information dashboard that can produce reports. This automated process churns out content that reads like it was written by an actual person. The dashboard also uses natural language to pull relevant news from the media to build a customised news feed.
Screenshot: An Overview of Team Stellar’s solution
Despite their win, the humble team maintained the competition is part of their learning journey. “We participated in this challenge to continue learning from each other, even beyond the MSBA programme,” said Stella. “It makes us feel like we’re in School again, even though we just graduated not too long ago,” she added.
EMC Chief Operating Officer Mr Lim Chew, who was a member of the judging panel, praised the teams’ innovative ideas. “It is really impressive to see such high quality work,” he said. He added it was a learning experience for EMC to witness the alumni and students’ perspective on implementing analytics.
“The challenge was NUS’ first collaboration with EMC and I look forward to seeing more ideas from MSBA alumni and students being deployed by EMC,” concluded Associate Professor James.
