Team from NWU runners up in the annual 2022 DIRISA Student Datathon Challenge

Pictured: From left to right: Noluvuyo Gqadu (CodeNgwana), Justin Sadie, Merwe van der Vyfer, Charmain Lebelo, Gary Groenewald, Dr Nobubele Shozi (CSIR). Photo: https://sdc.dirisa.ac.za/2022-datathon/

Written by  Mrs Susan Campher: Lecturer School of Computer Science and Information Systems

Four students from the NWU participated in the annual DIRISA Student Datathon Challenge that was held from 26 November 2022 to 2 December 2022. The competition took place at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) International Convention Centre in Pretoria and teams from nine universities and one secondary school participated. Team “Eagles” from the NWU were Justin Sadie (BSc in Computer Science and Physics) and Merwe van der Vyfer, Charmain Lebelo, and Gary Groenewald (BSc in IT students). Their university mentor was Susan Campher from the School of Computer Science and Information Systems.

The Datathon is a competition that is organised by the Data Intensive Research Initiative of South Africa (DIRISA) to showcase how open data can be used to come up with creative and innovative solutions to some of South Africa’s problems. The theme of the 2022 challenge was “Using social media data to find innovative solutions”. The NWU team “Eagles” walked away with the second prize with their solution to address gender-based violence.