| Danial Norjidi |
THE BruGEN35 team from Universiti Teknologi Brunei (UTB) emerged first place, followed by another UTB team Innovate as first runner-up and Team PB from Politeknik Brunei as second runner-up in the ASEAN Data Science Explorers (ADSE) Competition 2018 National Finals for Brunei Darussalam yesterday.
The event took place at UTB as UTB, under the School of Computing and Informatics, is the venue partner for the competition.
UTB Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr Hajah Zohrah binti Haji Sulaiman attended as the guest of honour. Also present was ASEAN Foundation Representative Mahmudi Yusbi.
The three judges of the competition were Acting Director of the ASEAN Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Brunei Darussalam Garry Ramlee bin Ibrahim; Youth Against Slavery Brunei Treasurer Nur Alia binti Haji Abdul Bari and Head of Corporate Affairs Southeast Asia at SAP Eugene Ho.
Co-organised by the ASEAN Foundation and SAP, ADSE 2018 aims to inspire and catalyse ASEAN youth activism. It targets tertiary students across all 10 ASEAN member states to harness the power of data, gain insights by leveraging the SAP Analytics Cloud and deliver ideas or recommendations to relevant ASEAN bodies.
Seven teams took part in the competition from various higher education institutions.
Garry Ramlee, Eugene Ho and UTB Deputy Dean of School of Computing and Informatics Dr Saiful Omar presented the prizes.
The competition winner will represent Brunei Darussalam in the regional finals in Singapore on October 25.
Introduced in 2017, the ADSE is a data analytics competition that aims to enhance awareness and appreciation of the ASEAN community among young people through digital literacy intervention.
By using the SAP Analytics Cloud platform, the initiative encourages participants to deliver data-driven insights which highlight issues in ASEAN across six of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, namely: good health and well-being; quality education; gender equality; industry, innovation and infrastructure; decent work and economic growth; and sustainable cities and communities.
Carrying the theme, ‘Today’s Youth for Tomorrow’s World’, the competition aims to allow all ASEAN youth to play a key role in social issues facing the region and help positive change for a better future.
In a speech at the event yesterday, Mahmudi Yusbi shared that the ADSE programme has generated strong interest among higher education students in ASEAN.
“In 2017, we received 804 students from 112 higher education institutions for the competition. The number has doubled in 2018, with 1,602 students from 175 institutions,” he said. “Next year, we are expecting more students to sign up for this competition, especially in Brunei.”
Meanwhile, Eugene Ho in his speech said, “SAP stands for Systems, Applications and Products. It is a German software company founded 46 years ago.” He highlighted that SAP is a world-leading enterprise applications provider with significant global influence, serving over 404,000 customers.
“We have strong commitment towards the community and improving people’s lives,” he said, explaining that as part of that endeavour, SAP partnered with the ASEAN Foundation since 2017 through their flagship programme, ADSE, as well as other initiatives.
He added that he was glad to see that the programme has expanded in scope and in shape.
The UTB Vice-Chancellor in her remarks yesterday said, “The competition is intended to inspire and catalyse ASEAN youth to harness the power of data and gain meaningful insight from this data through the use of various technologies, providing ideas or recommendations to relevant ASEAN bodies.
“I understand that this is the second competition since it was started in 2017 and I am very pleased to know that seven teams from higher education institutions are competing today and the winner will stand a chance to represent Brunei Darussalam in the regional finals in Singapore.
“I hope that this competition will strengthen the teams’ data analytics skills and I also hope to see more tertiary students joining the competition in the future,” she added.