The students of the UQU College of Computers and Information Systems have won first place in Open Data, a ‘Datathon’ Competition held in Riyadh last Thursday. The competition was organized by the e-Government Program, ‘Yesser’, in cooperation with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

In the three-day competition, Umm Al-Qura University students Muhammad Saeed Al-Zahrani, Muhammad Abdullah Al-Ghamdi, Abdul-Rahman Talaat, Emad Batwa, and Al-Baraa Badawi won a hundred thousand Riyal prize on account of their brilliance in solving a problem via an elaborate scientific solution. The UQU students demonstrated their abilities and skills in programming, artificial intelligence, data analysis, and business, outperforming a number of companies in the data market that participated in the competition.

The Dean of the College of Computers and Information Systems, Dr. Majid bin Muhammad Al-Qathami, stressed that this achievement is a culmination of the lauded efforts exerted by the college at the academic and practical levels. He added that the remarkable attendance of outstanding faculty members in such competitions proves that the UQU students possess high-level skills and competence, lauding the support of the UQU administration in achieving the vision and aspirations of the college.

The idea of the Open Data competition was to support innovation and community engagement, foster collaboration between the community and the public and private sectors, encourage community engagement through the use of open data to develop practical solutions for its problems, and develop innovative solutions and ideas that contribute to addressing existing problems in society.

The competition was held under the umbrella of the activities of the European Union Open Data Portal (EU ODP), and was organized by the governmental e-transactions transformation program, ‘Yesser’, in partnership with the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) and the Saudi Data Group. This edition of the competition was dedicated to supporting the nutrition sector in the Kingdom.

It is worth mentioning that the competition targeted the creative minds of data scientists, engineers, programmers, entrepreneurs, business developers, and nutrition experts in the Kingdom, who met over three days in teams of three to five individuals to develop solutions that contribute to sustainable development in the community in the field of nutrition.