Huawei, NUS Debut Innovation Challenge in Singapore

The Huawei-NUS Innovation Challenge will kick off on 9 February 2023. Students from universities and polytechnics in Singapore will have the chance to test their business analytics skills in an upcoming competition that will reward winning teams with hefty cash prizes.

The challenge is jointly organised by the National University of Singapore Business Analytics Centre (NUS BAC) and Huawei in Singapore, in partnership with Audaque Data Technology.

Shortlisted teams will receive coaching from the organisers to prepare for the finals. The winning team will walk away with a Grand Prize of S$10,000, while teams who come in second and third place will walk away with the Second Prize and Third Prize of S$5,000 and S$3,000, respectively.

NUS BAC is jointly supported by NUS Business School and NUS Computing and offers the Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) programme. Since 2014, NUS BAC has organised annual business analytics competitions in partnership with top industry players to spur innovative solutions for real-life business problems.

Associate Professor James Pang, Co-Director of the NUS BAC, said, "Over the years, we have had very supportive partners working with us to ensure that the experience is relevant and enriching for participants. This year marks NUS BAC's 10th anniversary, and we are happy to team up with Huawei to encourage participants to develop transformative ideas with AI and cloud technologies for the finance industry."

"Interest in the annual challenge has also grown over the years. We are pleased to announce that this year's competition, which was previously only for NUS students, will be open to students from all universities and polytechnics in Singapore. This makes way for more knowledge sharing and collaboration amongst students from different educational institutions, which could lead to greater achievements," Pang added.

This year, participants will work together in teams of four to six to build a stock trading model based on historical transaction data that allows users to time the market in order to "buy low, sell high.".

"We are proud to collaborate with NUS Business Analytics Centre on this Innovation Challenge," shared Zeng Xingyun, President of HUAWEI CLOUD APAC. "HUAWEI CLOUD strives to be one of the most comprehensive cloud service providers in the region. To achieve this goal, we will continue to tap on partnerships such as this to cultivate and nurture local talents that are agile, data-driven, and results-oriented. We believe that this will empower a generation of developers with fresh perspectives and mindsets to build a robust ecosystem, while creating shared values for global partners and customers."

As part of a previous Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Huawei and NUS BAC, HUAWEI CLOUD will provide ModelArts, the company's one-stop AI development platform to the Innovation Challenge. ModelArts allows developers of any skill level to rapidly build, train, and deploy models anywhere – from the cloud to the edge.

Beyond the Innovation Challenge, Huawei is also launching the Tech4City competition in Singapore to encourage local youths to develop innovative and creative solutions with technologies for a sustainable and liveable city of tomorrow. The Tech4City competition 2023 is expected to kick start soon.