The UCI Machine Learning (ML) Repository will host its 12-day Machine Learning Hackathon from May 18 to May 29. By participating in the hackathon, students will have the opportunity to work with real-world artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies through the UCI ML Repository. 

“I’d encourage students to participate for the opportunity to contribute to something that’s used by millions worldwide,” says Tamanna Hossain, the hackathon organizer and a computer science doctoral student. “The UCI ML Repository contains hundreds of datasets used for machine learning research and education.” 

Hackathon participants should aim to use features of the ML Repository to build projects that can be added to the repository. Students’ discoveries may be used by the larger ML community for various purposes, such as alongside relevant datasets to solve a problem. 

“Successful teams may be encouraged to continue developing their project after the event jointly with UCI’s machine learning repository research team,” the hackathon event page reads. “All participants will create open source work, allowing other teams or researchers to further their initial progress.”

The hackathon is open to UCI students of all majors and academic backgrounds, but the UCI ML Repository says having prior experience with ML will help students better succeed. Participants can work individually or in teams of up to four students and can meet with members of the repository for guidance. 

A number of features from the UCI ML Repository will be available for students to use in their hackathon projects: “visualization of datasets, automatic statistical analysis of datasets and ML methods, evaluation pipeline, dataset recommendation system, natural language processing,” among others.

“Working on a real-world use case with broad impact can be a powerful teacher and a fulfilling experience,” says Hossain. 

The winning projects will receive monetary prizes. They will also be credited as contributors to the UCI ML Repository if their submissions get incorporated into the repository website.

Registration for the ML Hackathon is open until May 16. For more information, visit the ML Hackathon page at tinyurl.com/UCI-ML-HACK. 

— Karen Phan