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Vidya Academy of Science & Technology

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CSE Dept organizes award ceremony of Hardpoint Consulting LLM Hackathon

Dr. Ramani Bai V
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With an aim to address real-world challenges faced by Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) by harnessing the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), the  Dept of CSE, in partnership with Hard point Consulting, a US-based firm, organized the “Hardpoint Consulting LLM Hackathon” during 25 March – 13 April 2024. Following the qualification of 10 teams in the final round, winners were chosen based on their performance and solutions presented.

Award Ceremony

The award ceremony, conducted via a Zoom meeting on 06 May 2024, commenced at 9:30 PM IST. It opened with an inaugural address delivered by Dr. Saji C B(Principal). Subsequently, Dr. Ramani Bai, (Professor, HoD, CSE Dept) who orchestrated and facilitated this remarkable initiative, addressed the audience. Mr Nidhin Kadavil (Principal Cloud Solution Architect-Data and AI at Microsof) briefed the audience about the objectives of the hackathon and shared his opinions about both the participants and coordinators. Mr. Raymond Kusch (CEO, Hardpoint Consulting) announced the winners and provided a brief commentary on the hackathon. Each winning team was invited to share their valuable experiences.

Winners
Prize Project  Team Members Prize Money
First Prize 404NotFound Amal Gopi, Harankumar, Deepak Nair V P, Elvin Jimmy P and Jeeva C S Rs. 18,000
First Runner-up Red Bulls Ignatius Nobel Chittilappilly, Haritha Tony, H Athulkrishnan, Hanna Jose, and Arya V S Rs. 6,000
Second Runner-up AI Alchemists Meenakshy N S, Neeraja Krishnakumar, Nandhana A R, A  Ardra Nair and Binil Babu P Rs. 6,000
Creative Team Parsing Pioneers Vrindha K, Sujishna V P, Sreechandhana K H, Lena Biju and Darwin T D Rs. 6,000

The Hackathon Journey

Announcement of the Hackathon

The Hackathon was announced during an introductory webinar on “Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLM),” conducted by Mr Raymond Kusch and Mr Nidhin Kadavil on 23 January 2024. The event saw participation from over 100 students and faculty members of the CSE Department.

Activities Conducted

  • Team Registrations: Students were allowed to register in groups of up to 5 for the Hackathon competition. A preliminary filtration process was applied to select the best 8 teams out of 16 registrations for the Hackathon.
  • Students’ Preparation for the Hackathon:
    • A comprehensive three-day workshop was held from February 5th to 7th, 2024, led by Dr. Shailesh Sivan from CUSAT, focusing on “Data Science Projects: Industry Perspective and Practices.”
    • A dynamic technical interaction session on March 13, 2024, featured esteemed alumni Mr. Vishnu Prasad (Chief of Staff, SynerAI, United States) and Mr. Nikhil P S (Senior Frontend Developer, StreamFT, United States), renowned for their achievements at the international level.

Additionally, Dr. Manu Madhavan (Assistant Professor, IIIT Kottayam, and an expert in Large Language Models) conducted a pre-training camp on March 26, 2024, equipping participants with the necessary tools and knowledge.

Hackathon Rounds

  • Initial Round (Last week of March 2024): Sixteen teams participated, tasked with the objective of automatically extracting titles and authors from research papers and formulating alternative titles. This was an intensive two-day sprint fueled by datasets provided by the hosts.
  • Final Round (April 3, 2024): Due to the outstanding performance, 10 standout teams were selected instead of the initially planned 8. Each team was assigned dedicated staff mentors and tasked with designing innovative solutions to address real-world challenges faced by SMEs, leveraging generative AI technologies.

Interaction and Evaluation

  • Slack Channels: Teams used Slack channels for interaction and seeking assistance from Mr. Raymond Kusch during the final rounds.
  • Progress Tracking and Doubts Clearing Session (April 6, 2024): A webinar was hosted by Mr. Raymond Kusch and Mr. Nidhin Kadavil to evaluate the teams’ progress and provide suggestions regarding the business problems chosen by the teams.
  • Submission of Solutions (April 10, 2024): Teams were required to submit their code (.py file) along with a presentation (.ppt file) through Github repositories.
  • Presentations & Evaluations (April 11-12, 2024): Teams showcased their solutions to Mr. Raymond Kusch and Mr. Nidhin Kadavil via Zoom meetings.
    The Editorial Team of News & Events joins the entire Vidya fraternity in extending hearty congratulations to all the winners on this prestigious Hackathon titles that paves the way for meaningful partnerships and opportunities for future growth in the world of NLP and LLM technologies in an international level.