MAI International Students Became One of the Winners at the Aviahackathon – 2019

The Eurasia team, which included five international students of MAI from China and India, secured third place at the II Inter University Aviahackathon.

From April 5 to 7, 2019, the IT Center of MAI held the II Interuniversity Aviahackathon, which brought together representatives of universities, airlines, airports, system integrators and IT companies on one site. The event was actually held in two languages and was completely adapted to ensure comfortable communication for all participants of the hackathon.

250 students from 16 Russian universities, who were divided into 29 teams, fought for victory at the Aviahackathon. The event gave participants an excellent opportunity to assess their competencies and gain new experience in solving real business cases presented by partner companies of Aviahackathon, as well as to cheer themselves up with drive and energy from the teamwork of the three-day marathon.

To work on the hackathon, eight different cases were proposed:

• “Flight Schedule Analysis” from S7 Airlines;
• “Forwarder and Steward Assistant” from aviation company Utair;
• “Chat-bot Platform to Increase Passenger Traffic” from Aurora Airlines;
• “Remote Control of Space Station Units Based on Gestures” from Phygitalism;
• “Aggregator of Data on the Flights of Tour Operators” from the tour operator TUI;
• “Monitoring of the Labor Market in the Aviation Industry” from the personnel agency Aviapersonal;
• “Search for a Windbreak on Aerial Photographs” from the group of companies Geoscan.

During the hackathon, 50 leading industry experts from companies that presented their cases, as well as other partners of the hackathon, such as the Federal Air Transport Agency Rosaviatsiya, the Moscow State Technical University of Civil Aviation (MSTU CA), HOT WiFi, the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF), Lambda MAI and others, helped the students to work on the cases. 

The el'TECH team from the St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University "LETI" took the first place in the hackathon. The ITSS team and its only participant Maxim Eremin, a student of the Faculty № 8  “Information Technology and Applied Mathematics”of MAI, received silver. The third place was shared by two teams: a mixed Eurasia team, which was composed of five international students of MAI from China and India and three students of Russian Technological University MIREA from Tajikistan, as well as a team Chinese Pilot of students from Bauman Moscow State Technical University and Moscow Polytechnic University.

“I have always been interested in business case solutions. The hackathons organized by MAI provide an opportunity to solve such cases, taking into account the requests of industry representatives. The main task was to develop your own product, which can be further commercialized, and submit it to the expert jury. This kind of experience and training is rarely obtained in the system of traditional higher education, and Aviahackathon provides such an opportunity for everyone,” – said Bharath Simha Reddy, a member of the Eurasia team, about his decision to participate in the three-day IT marathon.

For the first time a team of international students secured a winning spot at the Aviahackathon. Members of the Eurasia team chose the task “Remote Control of Space Station Units Based on Gestures” from Phygitalism among all the 8 proposed cases. 

“Our case was dedicated towards recognition, data transfer and visualization of results. We chose this topic because of our interest in the field of space and because it did not require deep knowledge of computer language, like other cases. We relied on our knowledge of MATLAB programming and a C language,” - said Bai Chenhong, captain of the Eurasia team. - “We divided our work into three stages: the data was displayed and recognized, moved to MATLAB, and then we visualized the results of gestures. We did all the tasks in parallel, not dividing them into 3 days.”

None of the students was an expert in programming languages, but they were able to solve the case due to their diligence and hard work.

“Each had its own task, and every thirty minutes we discussed our progress. We were coding all three days of the hackathon, trying to make the case solution as good as possible. Our life during the hackathon was a race against time, filled with the thrill of adventure, ideas and innovations,” – said member of the Eurasia team Bharath. - “We didn’t sleep much, programmed all the time and were overjoyed when we heard the name of our team among the winners. We experienced a feeling of joy and satisfaction from a well-deserved victory.”

Experts of Dassault Systems, NordStar Airlines, Sberbank's VR / AR laboratories and the Big Data Team visited the Aviahackathon of MAI, who highly appreciated the level of the event organization and the quality of case solving by the participants. 

All winners of the hackathon were awarded with memorable prizes and gifts from the companies Netologia, VR-RING, DreamAero, Alpina Publisher, SkyENG, IT Center of MAI, Utair, Geoscan, Winno Moscow, HOT WIFI, Online Cinema IVI, Phygitalism, Aviapersonal, Aurora Airlines, TUI, Lambda MAI, the IIDF, andRosaviatsiya.

“We have learned a lot during our participation at the Aviahackathon. For example, we have learned how to apply new knowledge and software in practice in a short period of time, work in a team, correctly distribute tasks and, accordingly, perform them. We really enjoyed what we were doing, and it was worth our efforts! ”- said Bai Chenhong, captain of the Eurasia team.