Hi!ckathon 2022 – Awards
The Hi!ckathon 2022, a competitive AI and Data Science challenge organized by the Hi! PARIS Center, announced the results of its second edition during an Award and Closing Ceremony held on March 7 2022.
On the weekend of March 5-6 2022 was organized the second edition of the Hi!ckathon, the Hi! PARIS Data Science and entrepreneurship hackathon at Telecom Paris, Palaiseau.
The event is supported by the five Hi! PARIS corporate donors: L’Oréal, Capgemini, TotalEnergies, Kering and Rexel, which have rewarded 5 winning teams with thematic prizes.
Participation
In its second edition, the Hi!ckathon has set a participation record, gathering 236 students from over 10 different schools and universities encompassing 7 countries. A total of 17 interdisciplinary teams made it to the finishing line, after they had followed several weeks of preparation and skills building trainings and made it through an intense two-days’ experience. During the 48 hours of the final sprint, participants were accompanied by 12 experimented data scientists and 3 business consultants from corporate donors, who gladly delivered 2 crash courses and more than 60 coaching sessions over the two days of final sprint week-end. These coaching sessions, along with many other activities (held remotely and on-site) has punctuated the weekend, with the aim of helping to drive innovation, as students worked to create holistic AI solutions.To benefit from an immersive live experience with direct communication amongst themselves and with the coaches, over 50 participants came to the venue. For instance, Charles (student at Télécom Paris Sud) who worked on site during the week-end, told us: “The Hi!ckathon was an enriching and unforgettable experience, you can count on me to be here next year!”.
Subject: Carbon foortprint of a company’s car fleet
All participants strived to make the most out of the competition. Their goal – in a nutshell – was to submit the best and most frugal AI model in view of solving an issue revolving around “AI & Sustainability”, whilst projecting the project in a business context. More specifically, the topic that brought together all hi!ckathoners of this year was about sizing the carbon footprint of a company’s employees’ car fleet. The students pushed towards harnessing the Computer Vision to bring a creative and relevant scientific approach in the fight against global climate change by reducing one of its primary drivers: CO2 emissions from car transport, known to be the main way of commuting, according to an INSEE study.
As part of their efforts to conceive a viable MVP, the teams that crossed the finishing line had successfully submitted 3 mandatory deliverables: a data science model, a scientific procedure document as well as a business video pitch.
Evaluation by a jury of experts
These submissions were carefully evaluated during a jury session on the morning of March 7 by a jury panel composed of prominent academics, corporate reprensentatives and established data science experts who devoted great care and attention to the business and societal impact of each project in its details. The jury rendered its decision by voting for 29 criteria and allocating up to 10 points for each criterion and for each team.
The members of the jury were very much impressed by the 10 preselected projects presented to them. Five of which were awarded by the Hi! PARIS Center’s corporate donors. During the closing ceremony, the corporate donors representatives revealed the awards’ nominees, announced and awarded the prizes.
Our corporate donors were represented by Stéphane Lannuzel, Operations Chief Digital Officer at L’Oréal, Maud Picq, Director Data Scientist at Capgemini, Victor Martin, Head of numeric platform for power and sustainability R&D at TotalEnergies, Nicolas Polaillon, Chief Data Officer at Kering and Constance Grisoni, Data Solution Manager at Rexel.
The prizes
Happy winners are invited to spend a condensed learning day in R&D laboratories and innovation centers of corporate donors in order to discover the key initiatives and sustainability strategies of these market-leading companies. Such an opportunity will also allow award winning teams to exchange further with experts from corporate donors and seek their assistance to pursue the hackathon project in the future.
Learn more about the awards and the laureates
Business Pitch Award by L’Oréal
The Business Pitch Award by L’Oréal rewards the team that best projected itself in the market context through an impactful video speech.
The winning team impressed the jury with a very concrete and visual presentation of how its solution, named UrbanAI, helped to adjust the traffic in smart cities, which represents a one billion euros market, according to the team’s video. Using many business features in their B2G product, they suggested to include the price of the car model by interrogating a new API, to integrate a dashboard with the statistics of the diminution of CO2 after the deployment of their SmartCams, etc. In a two minutes video, Team 6 was able to highlight a use case about Lyon using a figure and showing numerical estimations on profitability for example. They delivered a very structured and impactful pitch with a clear business plan.
Team 6 – Urban AI
Pierrick ALLAIN (INSA Lyon Télécom)
Hugo DELALANDE (INSA Lyon)
Jilin HE (Université Paris Saclay)
Amélie OUISSE (Insa Lyon)
Alexandre PERBET (IP PARIS – École polytechnique)
Hugo RIALAN (IP PARIS – École polytechnique)
Mélody ROUS (Université de Montpellier)
Scientific Approach Award by Capgemini
The Scientific Approach Award by Capgemini rewards the team that best demonstrates the ability to justify its scientific approach and confront the state-of-the-art in Data Science.
The winning team showcased a pragmatic approach to solve the issue. They took time to explore, understand and clean the data. For the modeling development, Team 12 – Gambergsae chose a classical but good strategy. Their main idea was to create a label, promoted by the public sector, that evaluates employee’s cars emissions. The platform they created for that purpose was hosted on a website they chose to creatively develop using JavaScript.
Team 12 – Gambergsae
Martin ALEXANDRE (IP PARIS – ENSAE Paris)
Camille BALLU (IP PARIS – ENSAE Paris)
Adrien CHKIRATE (IP PARIS – ENSAE Paris)
Lucas CLEMENTE (IP PARIS – ENSAE Paris)
Naël FARHAN (IP PARIS – ENSAE Paris)
Thomas KIENTZ (IP PARIS – ENSAE Paris)
Lucas SABAN (IP PARIS – ENSAE Paris)
Technical Excellence Award by TotalEnergies
The Technical Excellence Award rewards the tam whose data science model is the most technically successful, which achieved the highest score, calculated based on a synthetic measure of the model’s accuracy and environmental performance.
Team 4 – Great AI was the most successful, as it followed a “divide and conquer” strategy. So, they divided the problem into two : first detecting the car, then estimating its CO2 emission. To obtain the results they did, they went for Transfer Learning.
Team 4 – GreatAI
Pierre-Antoine ARSAGUET (IP PARIS – Telecom SudParis)
Elsa BISMUTH (IP PARIS – École polytechnique)
Georgi IVANOV (HEC Paris)
Marwan MASHRA (Université Paris Saclay)
Irina TTABACARU (HEC Paris)
Fabien ROGER (IP PARIS – École polytechnique)
Interdisciplinary Award by Kering
The Interdisciplinarity Award by Kering is given to the team that was most able to leverage several disciplines in the production of a scientific approach and a convincing business opportunity pitch.
Collaboration was boon for Team 1 – Over-AI-Ted to use their respective main strenghts and reap their full benefits. In their scientific procedure document, they explained how they started communicating on Discord days before the hackathon. Using many digital tools, the winning team shared ideas quickly and had all of its members actively involved in multi-disciplinary work.
Team 1 – Over-AI-ted
Zineb BOUHARRA (IP PARIS – Télécom Paris)
Sarah DEFFONTAINES (IP PARIS – Télécom Sud Paris)
Bryan DJAFER (INSA Lyon)
Nour EL KAMEL (IP PARIS – Télécom Paris)
Charles FARHAT (IP PARIS – Télecom Sud Paris)
Ivan IVANOV ( IP PARIS – Télécom Paris)
Antoine KLEIN (IP PARIS – Telecom Sud Paris)
Innovation Award by Rexel
The Innovation Award by Rexel rewards the team that produced an original, unexpected yet relevant solution to the challenge presented during the hackathon.
The winning solution was the Daisy Model, developped by Team 7 – Hi!gency “with a vision to help humanity take the next big step in sustainability”, according to their scientific procedure document. Both ambitious and creative, the Daisy solution impressed all the jury members, and made it in several other podiums. It presented original ideas and an out-of-the-box approach to answer to the topic of the hackathon.
Team 7 – Hi!gency
Laurine BURGARD-LOTZ (IP PARIS – Télecom Sud Paris)
Carlos CORTÉS ROJAS (IP PARIS – École polytechnique)
Riad EL OTMANI (IP PARIS – Télecom Sud Paris)
Emilien GRILLOT (IP PARIS – Télecom Sud Paris)
Karim KASSAB (IP PARIS – Télecom Paris)
Louis GRENIOUX (IP PARIS – Télecom Paris)
Walid YASSINE (IP PARIS – École polytechnique)
See you next year !
While the Hi!ckathon’s second edition is over, students from a Data Science or a Business background who are interested in joining next year’s hackathon should follow the Hi! PARIS official website where further information regarding the competition could be obtained.