"Ural Alfa Hack" Was Held at the University

13:30, December 6, 2023

The students of the Business Informatics Program became winners [photo report]

Ural Alfa Hack, a large-scale hackathon of Alfa Bank, brought together students of the Ural Federal University who are interested in data analysis, applied mathematics, banking, and the IT sphere in general. For ten days, the participants have been solving the problem of cost optimization in ATMs. On December 2, four finalist teams competed for the main prize that was the opportunity to start their career at Alfa-Bank. 

"The task of the participants was to minimize the cost of servicing the ATM network by improving the collection schedule. This is an important business process for any bank. Despite the development of the cashless payment system, the population still actively uses cash, so ATMs should always have enough banknotes for withdrawal. However, if the ATMs do not have enough cash for withdrawals, they will not work and the bank will lose profit. That is why we constantly analyze the volume of cash movements in ATMs and solve the optimization problem over and over again," said one of the experts, Evgeny Gavrilin, Head of Intelligent Data Analysis at Alfa Bank.

Students from teams with creative names "Pixel Pioneers", "Infinite code", "Unbeatable" and "Pandas" processed the data proposed by the organizers, built an optimization algorithm, tested their solution on the platform and presented the results in the format of a seven-minute defense to the juries of Alfa-Bank and UrFU. 

The boys not only presented their algorithms, but also answered substantive questions from the judges. The first place went to the team "Pandas" (consisting of Alexander Baranov and Vladislav Yanets). The guys are second year students of Business Informatics Program at the Graduate School of Economics and Management. 

"The contest was very interesting and well organized. We received quick and complete answers to all our questions in the support chat room at the stage of project preparation. And the knowledge we get in our classes at the university helped us to win," said the winners. 

In addition to the opportunity to get an internship, the participants received Alfa-Bank products and useful experience: skills to work on applied business tasks. 

Reference

For those who did not have time to participate in this intellectual competition, there are new activities offered by the University's corporate partner. Details and a calendar of events can be found in the specialized channel of Alfa-Bank. 

(Daria Guzenko, based on the materials of the GSEM)

The news article was translated by UrFU International Marketing Office.
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