May 3, 2022 – With activities moving online further amidst the pandemic, the use of social media has surged dramatically in recent years, generating an unprecedented amount of social data. To inspire tertiary students to uncover meaningful insights with the use of big data and data analytics, the Center for Business and Social Analytics (CBSA) at the School of Business and Management of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST Business School), and Wisers AI Lab of Wisers Information Limited jointly organized the CBSA-Wisers Analytics Challenge @HKUST for the first time, drawing 30 team registrations from local tertiary institutions.

The seven-month research undertaking was concluded at the final round in April 2022, where the five finalist teams leveraged their analysis in the preliminary round to construct a model to predict passenger arrivals and departures in Hong Kong during the COVID-19 pandemic. A three-member team from the HKUST Dual Degree Program in Technology and Management (T&M-DDP) took the championship.

Presented with the open-end task of extracting insights from a data set containing more than 440,000 news articles, social media posts, and comments related to the COVID-19 outbreak in Hong Kong, the contest participants had the chance to develop algorithms and analytical methods for examining public interests in timely topics such as vaccines, government policies, and economic development. A series of five webinars was organized in late 2021 to help participants acquaint with big data and business and social analytics.

“The winning presentation demonstrated the most comprehensive work in terms of the data analytical lifecycle,” said Dr. Chao He, Head of AI and Vice President, Wisers Information Limited. “The team members conducted a thorough data exploration with demonstrated excellence in feature engineering, model training, and model evaluation.”

“The challenge has given the students a better understanding of the complexities and difficulties of working on an analytics project, and an opportunity to connect their analysis to real-world predictions. By discovering the patterns inherent in the data, data analytics helps extract a wealth of insights to benefit the broader community,” said Prof. Kai-Lung Hui, Director of CBSA and Deputy Head and Chair Professor of Information Systems, Business Statistics, and Operations Management, HKUST Business School.

The champion team was awarded a cash prize of HK$30,000 and job interview opportunities sponsored by Wisers Information Limited. “The analytics challenge was a memorable and eye-opening experience, giving us the chance to handle a huge amount of real-world data in a way that went beyond theoretical, and understand the value of team work. The feedback and suggestions provided by the judges on our first-round submission pushed us to dig deeper into our analysis in preparation for the final round,” said Samuel Lau, a member of the champion team from HKUST Business School. 

To learn more about the CBSA-Wisers Analytics Challenge @HKUST 2021/22, 

please visit: https://cbsa.hkust.edu.hk/CBSA-Wisers-Analytics-Challenge-2021-22

Group picture of the finalist teams with the judges, Prof. Kai-Lung Hui (first left), Director of CBSA and Deputy Head and Chair Professor of Information Systems, Business Statistics, and Operations Management, HKUST; Prof. Allen Huang (first middle), Associate Director of CBSA and Associate Professor of Accounting, HKUST; and Dr. Chao He (second left), Head of AI and Vice President, Wisers Information Limited.

A picture of the team members of CTRL+F, first place winner, with Dr. Chao He, presenter of the award.

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About the Center for Business and Social Analytics (CBSA)

The Center for Business and Social Analytics (CBSA) of HKUST Business School is committed to studying timely business and social problems by utilizing the big data from the Internet. The data used in our research has a wide span, including social media posts, publicity, user-generated content, user likes and follows, and other social, business, and interpersonal exchanges. CBSA draws on the strengths of faculty and researchers from diverse disciplines, such as business accounting and economics, information systems, decision analytics, finance, computer science, and humanities and social sciences, to produce evidence-based research with the aim of informing business practices and public policies.

CBSA actively collaborates with other academic, public, and private organizations who share the same vision of cultivating and analyzing social big data to uncover novel insights and knowledge. The Center welcomes collaboration with academic scholars and industry practitioners to address emerging business and social problems for the long-term betterment of Hong Kong and beyond.

About Wisers Information Limited

Founded in Hong Kong in 1998, Wisers is the world's leading expert in all-media big data smart business intelligence solutions. With Wisers AI Lab’s best-in-class natural language processing (NLP), computer vision (CV), and business analytical technologies, Wisers excels in transforming big data, both internal and external, structured and unstructured, into clear insights and business values, enabling enterprises to make smart decisions, serving 3,000+ clients across different industries to monitor, discover, track and analyze public relations and marketing insights, unveil financial risks, and augment public policy intelligence. 

Wisers AI Lab is dedicated to developing industry leading AI technologies to empower businesses and organizations in their AI transformation journey. Its international winning NLP and CV technologies are now available on its newly launched Wisers AI Cloud.