Rules and registration

Targeted participants

SUS⁶ is open to national and international Master or PhD students (an undergraduate degree is suggested, but not compulsory), with competencies in Statistics, Data Science, and Machine Learning. The participants work in teams made of a minimum of 2 to a maximum of 4 people. The challenge is in English and teams made by a single participant are not allowed.
Spots are limited: we estimate a maximum capacity of 15 teams (depending on team-sizes).

The challenge

The teams compete on the same business problem and anonymized dataset. The whole competition is managed through the Bee-viva platform where the teams can

• Download the dataset.
• Submit their predictions for the test set.
• View their partial ranking (computed on a subset of the test set).
• Upload their final reports.
• Check their final position, once the challenge is closed.

Such a final ranking is based on the last prediction submitted. All teams are assigned suitable locations, equipped with charging stations and wi-fi connections. Each team is responsible to bring the hardware (laptop, tablets, ...) necessary to analyze the data and may use any programming language or software which is deemed appropriate. Other materials such as books, notes, slides, and internet sources are allowed as long as they do not interfere with the proper functioning of the competition, causing an unreasonable overload of technological infrastructure and servers or intercepting operating systems, data or personal information or violating, stealing or canceling information or computer correspondence to third parties. All teams' activities must be carried out only within the competition venue. The help of external collaborators is not allowed.


Within SAS Academic Program, SAS provides students with free access to the SAS Software on Cloud and SAS Skill Builder for Students portal, which contains several courses on the SAS Software in e-learning.
In order to use these resources, you need an institutional e-mail address and internet connection. To access the SAS free services, please follow the instructions available here.

Final evaluation

For the evaluation, the teams are asked to decide which of all the submissions they want to be evaluated as the final predictions for the test set on the Bee-Viva platform. They must also upload a report describing their final solution along with a discussion on relevant patterns that have been found in the data. Much care must be dedicated to the discussion of aspects that might be useful for the FlowTraders who provided the challenge and business problem.

These reports:

• Must not be offensive, insulting, defamatory, libelous, pornographic, vulgar, obscene, pedopornographic and, in any case, not in disagreement with the principles of public order or morality or that may cause harm in any way to minors.
• Must not contain viruses or other programs aimed at damaging or interfering with the proper functioning of the competition.
• Must not contain advertising, promotional material or any other form of unrequested or unwanted solicitation.
• Must not concern minors in any way.
• Are not handed back to the teams at the end of the competition.

Based on the materials provided at the end of the challenge, three winning teams are selected by a committee of Data Scientists from academia and industry. The evaluation and the awards assignment are based solely on merit criteria. These include, but are not limited to

• Predictive performance
• Quality of the final report
• Applicability and effective presentation of the results
• Creativity in combining different analytical methods successfully
• Ability to include external information from the public domain
• Capability to use different software efficiently

Incomplete or non-compliant materials are not evaluated. Materials received according to times or methods different from those indicated are not evaluated. This hackathon does not, in any case, constitute a "manifestazione a premio" pursuant to art. 6 of the D.P.R. 430/2001.

Prizes

Based on the judgment of the committee, which is final, the three winning teams are entitled to receive three different prizes.

• Best project overall (first prize - € 1.000 + fast track into the recruitment process for Flow Traders Quant Researcher)
• Best objective prediction (second prize - € 500 + SAS course)
• Best quality of the report (third prize - € 500)

The winning teams are notified in June 2023 and are formally announced during the SIS 2023 of June 2023 at the SIS2023 conference. The presence of at least one member of each winning team is required during the awards ceremony (only for the three winning teams). At the notification step and during the awards ceremony, the winners will receive detailed information on how to claim the prizes.

Registration

The registration is free. The team-leader of each team has to register for the event SUS⁶ using the form provided in link .
Unfortunately, the spots for participation in SUS6 are sold out. The team will be placed on a waiting list, and if a spot becomes available, you will be contacted.
To ensure participation, the form must be completed in all its parts, declaring also the name of the team and the team's components names. The registrations will close on 31/05/2022 or once the maximum number of 15 teams is reached.
All team members must own a University/Institutional e-mail address certifying their student status.
The team-leader must enroll the team using its own institutional e-mail address when compiling the registration form. He must also enter the institutional e-mail addresses of all team members in a specific section of the form.

By registering to the event SUS⁶

• Each participant acknowledges that the dataset, including all its copies, reproductions, or parts of it, is and will remain the exclusive property of the FlowTraders.
• Each participant undertakes (i) to keep the dataset strictly confidential and not to disclose it to third parties for the entire duration of the hackathon and for the following five years; (ii) not to make improper use of it; (iii) not to copy it, reproduce it or keep it, in any form and by any means; (iv) to remove it from his/her own machine and from any support and/or material in his/her possession at the end of the competition; (v) not to allow third parties to access, copy or reproduce it; as well as (vi) to grant to FlowTraders the right to know and exclusively implement the proposed solutions for the problem presented.
• Each participant acknowledges and accepts that all results and/or analyses produced during the hackathon must be considered the exclusive property of the FlowTraders, which will acquire the full, exclusive, and undisputed property (with the express exclusion of the moral copyright) together with the related rights provided by the rules, of any rank, international, European, national and foreign in the field of intellectual property and industrial property. To this end, the participant undertakes to transfer definitively to the FlowTraders any data, information, or source code, in any form, concerning the solutions generated during the hackathon.

Each participant will hold the FlowTraders harmless and undamaged against any breach of the foregoing obligations, or otherwise, refund the FlowTraders from any amount of money paid for any reason due to such violation.

Limitations of liability

The organizers assume no responsibility for technical malfunctions that may adversely affect the registration procedure or the notification of the results. By way of non-exhaustive example, the organizers are not responsible for interruptions in network connections; data upload failed, incorrect, incomplete; or non-functioning communications with participants due to spam filters that can block communications to participants. The organizers are not responsible for the lawful or illicit use of third-party content used by participants without permission.