Bluechip Technologies Limited, a leading indigenous business applications and data management solutions firm, continues its commitment to capacity building by sponsoring the second edition of the Inter-Campus Machine Learning Competition.
The competition includes about 100 universities and polytechnics across all the states of Nigeria.
The competition increases students’ expertise, enhances the opportunities and employability of Nigerian students through an incentivised exposure to advanced knowledge in Data Science, which is now world’s No. 1 career.
Bluechip Technologies also sponsored the competition last year as part of its 10th anniversary. The competition, organised by Data Science Nigeria, is now in the final stage.
The top 150 students on the global data science platform, Kaggle, will be invited to a 6-day residential, all-expenses-paid training bootcamp in Lagos from 19 to 24 November 2019.
Bluechip Technologies, established in 2008, offers a customer-centric approach that delivers the data management expertise needed to guide the decision-making of financial, telecommunications, manufacturing and public sector organizations. In 2010, Bluechip began to diversify its services across Africa, opening offices in Kenya, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Through a suite of innovative proprietary technology products and strategic partnerships with the leading original equipment manufacturers and multi-national firms, the company has tripled in size and impact over the past decade.
The company is firmly committed to educational development and local talent-building through its endowment and multiple internship programme. Kazeem Tewogbade, Managing Director of Bluechip Technologies Limited, stated that‘“Bluechip Technologies believe that digital skills will shape the future of Nigeria, and building capacity in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence will transform our country. This is why we remain committed to doing this as part of our corporate social responsibility agenda’.
Olumide Soyombo, co-founder of Bluechip Technologies, explained that ’Our growth as a company has shown the power of possibilities and the indigenous brilliance that exists in every corner of Nigeria. We are excited to support students with an all-expenses-paid bootcamp where the best talents are powered to become employable’.
The six-day residential bootcamp will include face-to-face teaching, virtual online classes, and a hands-on hackathon using the Kaggle platform. It will also include the finals of the selection quiz competition to determine the winner of the Masters in Artificial Intelligence scholarship at Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa.
The bootcamp learning sessions will be enriched by 25 leading experts from different parts of the world, including Tom Dietterich, Distinguished Professor at Oregon State University and the founder of BigML company; Kris Sankaran of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, Canada; Anima Anandkumar, Professor of Computing, CalTech, USA; Kathleen Siminyu, Regional Coordinator, Artificial Intelligence for Development, AI4Development, Kenya; Dr Stephen G. Odaibo, CEO, RetinaAI, USA; Samuel Edet, IMT Italy; Wale Akinfaderin, Senior Data Scientist, Duke Energy; Emmanuel Doro, Data Science Director, Walmart, USA; Uzo Mkparu, Group Head, CRM, Customer Analytics & Insights FCMB; Pascal Bernard, Head of Data Science, OneFi; Elaine Nsoesie, Assistant Professor, Boston University; Kunle Olukotun, Professor at Stanford University; Dr. Nnana Orieke, Cloud Solution Architect, Data and AI, Microsoft; Nicholas Litombe, Data Scientist and Physicist; Robert John, Data Science Officer, EnterFive; Dr. Sakinat Folorunsho, Lecturer, Computer Science, OOU; Olubayo Adekanmbi, Convener of Data Science Nigeria and Chief Transformation Officer, MTN Nigeria, among others.
Data Science Nigeria is a non-profit initiative of MTN’s Chief Transformation Officer, Bayo Adekanmbi, spurred on by a compelling drive to raise a new generation of data scientists and knowledge entrepreneurs who will lead high-impact artificial intelligence research for socio-economic development, transformational innovation, and the economic prosperity of Nigeria and the continent at large.
Participation in the six-day AI bootcamp is based on pre-competition Kaggle qualification at https://www.kaggle.com/c/intercampusai2019 and 100 Days of machine learning/deep learning classes at https://t.co/wBm6Qsul6b.