Date: 19 September 2026
Eligibility: Third- and fourth-year data science and allied discipline students
Team Formation:
- Team size: 3–4 members per team (no solo or 2-person teams, to encourage collaboration)
- Team composition: Teams must be self-formed by students; cross-year teams (mixing juniors and seniors) are allowed and encouraged.
- Registration deadline: Teams must register with member names, enrolment numbers, and a team name by 7 September 2026, two weeks before the event
- Team changes: No changes to team composition after the registration deadline
Judging Criteria and Winner Selection
All code must be written during the hackathon window. Of note, pre-built models, pre-written pipelines, or previously prepared solutions are not allowed. The use of open-source libraries, pre-trained models (e.g., embeddings, base LLMs), and public documentation is allowed and encouraged.
Use of AI coding assistants (e.g., Claude, ChatGPT, and Copilot) is not allowed. Teams must use only the provided dataset.
All submissions must include a short Markdown write-up of assumptions, approach, and any external resources used. Plagiarism or the reuse of another team’s code will result in disqualification from the hackathon. The event organisers may check version history (e.g., notebook timestamps) to verify that work was done during the event.
Submission Requirements
- Each team must submit before the deadline:
- Code/notebook (or zipped folder)
- Presentation slides (5–8 slides): problem understanding, approach, key results, and limitations
- A short README covering:
- Team name and members
- Problem/track chosen
- Approach summary
- Tools/libraries used
- Instructions to reproduce results (if applicable)
Late submissions: Late submissions will be accepted with a 2-point penalty per 1 minute late.