"Ural Alfa Hack" ended last Saturday in UrFU

12:26, December 4, 2023

The winners were students of bachelor’s programme "Business Informatics”

A large-scale hackathon from Alfa-Bank gathered together the most active students of the Ural Federal University, interested in data analytics, applied mathematics, banking and the IT field in general. For 10 days, the guys solved the problem of optimizing expenses at ATMs. On December 2, 4 teams of finalists competed for the main prize, the opportunity to start a career in the most technologically advanced bank.

"The task of the participants was applied – to minimize the costs of servicing the ATM network by improving the collection schedule. Despite the development of the non-cash payment system, the population still actively uses cash, so ATMs should always have a sufficient number of banknotes for withdrawal. But if the money just sits in the ATM unclaimed for withdrawal, it doesn’t work, and the bank loses profit. Therefore, we continuously analyze the volume of money movement in ATMs - and again and again we solve the optimization problem,” said one of the experts and judges, Evgeny Gavrilin, Head of Data Mining 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 7-minute defenses in front of a jury consisting of:

• Evgeny Gavrilin, Head of Data Mining at Alfa-Bank
• Maria Stepanova, Data Mining Specialist at Alfa-Bank
• Alexander Tolmachev, lecturer at the Department of Systems Analysis and Decision Making, Graduate School of Economics and Management, UrFU
• Ibrahim Alnafrah, researcher at Graduate School of Economics and Management of UrFU

The guys not only presented their algorithms, but also answered meaningful questions from the judges. Following a stubborn struggle, 1st place went to the “Pandas” team consisting of:

• Baranov Alexander
• Yanets Vladislav

The guys are studying in the 2nd year of the Business Informatics program at Graduate School of Economics and Management of UrFU. “The competition was very interesting and well organized. In the support chat at the project preparation stage, we received quick and complete answers to all our questions. And what helped us win was the knowledge we gain in classes while studying at the university,” Sasha and Vlad shared their impressions.

Congratulations to all the winners and finalists! In addition to the opportunity to get an internship, the guys received wonderful merch from Alfa-Bank and useful experience – skills of working on applied business tasks.  We wish our students further success!