TISB ML-Thon – The Results Are In

Over a period of 4 months, a TISB team consisting of Grade 11 students, Ayush, Raghav, Rishabh, Seongjoon, Pranav, Kush and Aryan, have been working hard towards hosting the TISB ML-thon – a Machine Learning competition for High School students all across India. After long preparations, the competition was held from 10-18th April and attracted students from all over India, with so many participants that it broke the record and became the largest machine learning competition for High School students in the country. We got in touch with Ayush from the organising team to learn more about the event and the results of the competition.

Over the course of the week-long competition, over 120 participants from more than 40 schools and more than 10 cities in India took part in the TISB ML-Thon, where they got to practise and exhibit their skills in Machine Learning. To build the participants knowledge and skills, some of the world’s leading machine learning researchers and practitioners gave keynotes and mentoring sessions to the participants. The TISB team behind the event had found an empty space in the field, and wanted to do something about it. “We found that there isn't a platform specifically meant for High School students, to compete and collaborate with each other in the field of Machine Learning”, says Ayush, who stress that besides the actual competition, the event created a healthy and collaborative community for High School Machine Learning enthusiasts.

About two months before the competition, the team opened up the registration for High School students between Grades 9-12 from all over India on their website. “To help participants get excited about Machine Learning – even complete beginners – we also released starter resources for those new to Machine Learning to learn the basics”, says Ayush and explains how they attracted participants by offering a total prize pool of 35,000 INR and exciting internship opportunities for the winners. 

A majority of the event went according to plan and worked out flawlessly. The team provided participants with two exciting real-world problem statements: first, predicting the number of shares an article would receive; and second, analysing face images to capture face-attributes. Most of the week long event was going according to plans with all its webinars and workshops. The team had thought of eight prizes, including a collaboration award for helping others. The winners of the TISB ML-Thon are:

1st Place: Matrix Maneuver – Ayush
2nd Place: Team Recon – Chirag & Aakarsh
3rd Place: Digitalizers – Sampreeth & Vineet

Community Contribution Award: Team Alphalaser – Adit

Honourable Mentions
4th Place: The Universe Boss – Tanav
5th Place: S1gm01d – Avinash & Hayden
6th Place: The Lone – AquAssassin3791YT
7th Place: hackers ignited – Syon, shubhojeet & Ayaan

Since the end of the competition most of our participants have remained on the TISB ML-Thon website, where the team has created a platform for people discussing topics and issues related to Machine Learning with other High School students. The team has started exploring avenues for the continuation of the platform and upcoming events. “We hope to provide participants with problem statements currently being solved by companies, and maybe even allowing winners to collaborate with companies and work on the solution”, says Ayush, explaining how the team wants to hand out larger prizes to better reward winners for their competitive work next year.

To learn more about the competition and the platform, visit the TISB ML-Thon website, or watch the opening ceremony of the TISB ML-Thon.