The University of Naples Federico II has collaborated with KNIME to launch a student challenge in ‘Biomass Analysis & Predictive Modeling for the Bioenergy Sector’ in the 2023/2024 academic year. The initiative is designed for students of the Machine Learning course, lectured by Prof. Carlo Sansone, which is part of the Master’s Degree Course in Computer Engineering at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (DIETI).
The department has extensive experience with the challenge-based framework as an approach to support students in putting their studied theory into practice. Since the beginning of its delivery, the machine learning course – as well as the department’s data mining course – has always included at least one contest that draws on real data from industry or external research partners, and which students are required to take part in as part of their examination.
The collaboration between the university and KNIME draws on KNIME’s program to gamify learning, coordinated by the KNIME Educators Alliance, which aims to promote and implement playful initiatives, such as competitions, learnathons, and hackathons, in order to support the development of a data culture and foster data literacy in higher education. KNIME’s free and open-source low-code analytics platform, together with its active community, enables data professionals to easily access simple and advanced data science techniques and enables educators and researchers to teach them to the next generation of professionals.
You can read the original announcement in Italian on the university website.
The gamification initiative follows the example of other KNIME Student Challenges held for example at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome (Italy), with Prof. Francisco Villarroel, Technische Hochschule in Cologne (Germany) with Prof. Tobias Schlüter, ETH with Prof. Ulrick Brandes in Zurich (CH), VCU (with Prof. Dayanjan (Shanaka) Wijesinghe) in Richmond (VA, USA), and Bicocca University by Prof. Fabio Stella in Milan (Italy).
The University of Naples Federico II is defining the theme and goals of the competition, as well as providing the data, while KNIME is offering training, practical professional skills, prizes and certifications for the five finalist teams.
The jury members will assess the projects and decide on the winning team based on the accuracy, complexity, clarity, usability, and completeness of their documentation.
We look forward to learning about the projects submitted by the teams!