​Sponsored by Entersekt, Capitec and Explore, the third annual Stellenbosch University Hackathon was held remotely over the weekend of 31 July to 2 August 2020.

The SU Hackathon is hosted by Innovus and Stellenbosch University and focuses on bringing talented student programmers, designers, builders, statisticians, scientists and engineers together to learn, build and share their creative ideas, while solving industry-relevant problems innovatively. It is open to all SU undergraduate and postgraduate students, and participants have the option of signing up for one of two challenges: a fintech coding challenge or a data science challenge. 

This year, postgraduate students of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences won the data science section of the competition. The winning team comprised Ulrick Kotze (MCom in Statistics), Niel van Zyl (MCom in Statistics), Claudia di Santolo (MCom in Statistics) and Thamu Mnyulwa (MSc in Applied Mathematics). Another EMS team, that of David Rodwell (MCom in Financial Risk Management), received an honourable mention.

The team that came second was from Engineering.

Said Prof Paul Mostert, chair of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science: “We are extremely proud of our postgraduate students!"