IT-Center of MAI Held an AVIASAP Hackathon on Aviation and Transport

On February 28-29, the AVIASAP hackathon was held at Moscow Aviation Institute. It was a two-day hackathon on aviation and transport topics, organized jointly by the IT-Center of MAI and SAP (the world leader among suppliers of business management software solutions), which provided its platform and cases for the competition. Also, a case for aircraft maintenance on the entire product life cycle for a hackathon solution was presented by the MAI Service School.

The event was attended by more than 50 students from Moscow Aviation Institute, Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Russian University of Transport, K.G. Razumovsky Moscow State University of Technologies and Management, Higher School of Economics (HSE), Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Obninsk Institute For Nuclear Power Engineering at MEPhI, Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas, National Research University of Electronic Technology, Gymnasium of the city of Obninsk. 

Six MAI international students from the School No.1 "Aircraft Engineering", School No. 3 "Control Systems, Informatics and Power Engineering" and School No.6 "Aerospace" took part at the hackathon. 

Real business tasks, teamwork, experience with the SAP platform, which is used by 300,000+ companies around the world awaited the participants. They could learn more about digital in aviation, come up with their own solution to one of the known problems and implement it on the basis of SAP Cloud Platform, SAP BUILD, SAP Analytics Cloud. Representatives of SAP, MAI and companies such as Accenture, Ramax, PwC and Nowardis, which are leaders in the use of SAP solutions, gave advices to the participants and evaluated their solutions. Also during the event, representatives of SAP and its partners told the participants about career opportunities in their organizations.

Hackathon directions were:

- optimization of airline services;

- optimization of airport services;

- optimization of passenger experience.

The participants solved cases on the following topics:

- B2B. Any interactions between market participants (the effectiveness of such interaction helps companies reduce costs);

- B2C. Customer experience stories (improving passenger service);

- manufacturer-airline (the subject of after-sales service).

The projects were defended in the form of a presentation to an expert jury consisting of representatives of the Moscow Aviation Institute, SAP, and industrial partners of the event. 

Evaluation of the work was based on 4 criteria:

• relevance of the problem statement, case context, expert recommendations;
• originality of the proposed solution concept, demonstration of the use of new technologies (IoT, BigData, BlockChain, AI&ML, AR/ VR/MR, etc.);
• feasibility of the formulated solution in terms of the socio-economic environment, subsequent design work, context and architecture of the target customer;
• functionality of the demonstrated solution prototype, its design and usability.

The 1st and 3rd places were taken by combined teams consisting of students from different universities, including Russian and international students of Moscow Aviation Institute:

1st place: MAI, Obninsk Institute For Nuclear Power Engineering at MEPhI, Gymnasium of the city of Obninsk;

3rd place: MAI, Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.

2nd place went to the HSE team. All the hackathon participants received not only invaluable knowledge, but also experience, as well as the opportunity to make useful contacts. The winners received prizes and the opportunity for internships from SAP and its partners (Accenture, Deloitte, EY, PWC, RAMAX, TerraLink, IBS, BDO, SAPRUN, Novardis, Teamidea, Bearing Point).

The hackathon is the second joint event of MAI and SAP. Today, the university is developing a strategic partnership with SAP both in the educational and career basis, and in project activities: creating high-tech solutions for the aviation industry.