On June 10-11, the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering hosted a Microsoft Azure Hackathon on the Texas A&M University campus. This event allowed students and faculty to discover the various offerings of Microsoft Azure and how it could be applied to various projects.
Hackathons give students the opportunity to work on teams with their peers during a short time frame to solve complex problems by finding impactful, technologically advanced solutions.
Students from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Department of Biomedical Engineering, and others, worked in teams with Microsoft Azure specialists and faculty advisors to use the cloud service tool to solve complex problems.
“I learned a lot about Microsoft Azure’s capabilities in a short period of time,” said Zheng Xiao, a senior computer science major. “My team worked on developing a chatbot that asks questions about your mental health.
Students were able to see how Microsoft Azure can assist with computation and data management by performing a series of tasks using the services over the two-day event.
Students worked on various projects including pediatric diabetes management, chat-bots for advising and mental health applications and safety database integration and management.
“Students learned how machine learning, natural language processing, chatbots, visualization, application deployment and scalability in Microsoft Azure helped them during their projects,” said Dr. Madhav Erraguntla, associate professor of practice in the industrial and systems engineering department and coordinator of the hackathon.
Students had two days to fulfill all the tasks outlined in the hackathon and were able to collaborate with their peers, faculty and Microsoft advisors. One group worked with Texas Children’s Hospital; their project focused on pediatric diabetes.
“The industrial and systems engineering department was thrilled to host this hackathon with Microsoft Azure to give our students, and those across the College of Engineering, practical experience using the services available through Microsoft Azure,” said Dr. Mark Lawley, head of industrial and systems engineering. “I am glad we were able to facilitate this event and learn about the many tools Microsoft Azure can provide for our projects.”