CIKM Cup 2016 - an international competition in the field of Data Science

Big Data comes on all fronts - their role is growing in science, business, medicine, security management and in the economy. Therefore, each of the spheres is ready for a joke to fight for the best minds of specialists. Among the most successful attempts to find the most-most - the most important global competition in the field of data analysis CIKM Cup 2016, which takes place within the framework of the 25th international conference CIKM Conf. 2016. Russian technology company DCA, specializing in work with big data and high-loaded systems, this time became a partner of the conference and competition. DCA has formed a task to be solved by the participants of the CIKM Cup 2016, and also provided the necessary data set for analysis. Want to learn a little more about the task and try your hand at Data Scientist competitions? To whom, if not to us, know how strong are Russian data processing specialists.


We are looking for our Bruce Willis.

The CIKM Cup 2016 competition is part of the international scientific and practical conference CIKM 2016, which will be held on October 24-28 this year for the 25th time and will bring together scientists, academics, information technology professionals and professionals for several days. Traditionally, CIKM takes place in various cities of the world (Baltimore, USA, 1992 - Melbourne, Australia, 2015), thus symbolizing the transboundary nature of science and information technology. In 2016, the conference will take the city of Indianapolis, USA.

CIKM 2016 is located at the junction of three areas of science - information retrieval, databases and knowledge management. CIKM focuses on complex interdisciplinary information problems and global challenges facing the academic community and society as a whole. To strengthen the interaction between science and business, which is necessary to accelerate research in the field of Data Science and innovation in the industry, this year for the first time CIKM will complement the program with a full day devoted to open vacancies (Career Day), as well as present an extensive program with the active participation of industry representatives (Industry Track), which will work for all three days of the main conference, in addition to the Research Track research program, which has already proven its effectiveness for 25 years.
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Being, for the most part, an event of the scientific, academic world, CIKM strives for rapprochement with real applied spheres of life. This is exactly where the CIKM Cup competition is held: IT companies set real challenges, and their strongest Data Scientists around the world solve.

The competition is open, anyone can take part from any country in the world - just register on the site and send a request. Each participant is invited to solve two actual problems:

1. Cross-Device Entity Linking for Online Advertising with support from DCA (Data-Centric Alliance)

2. Personalized E-commerce Search with the support of DIGINETICA.

The proposed problems are related to e-commerce and online advertising - perhaps the first industries that caught the commercial value of big data and began to intensively develop in this direction, actively rebuilding both programmatic and targeting, and working with events on the “rails” of big data. That is why internship in companies of such industries is of great value - you can work with data collected both online and through user interaction with elements of the Internet of things (sensors, counters, wearable electronics).

The prize fund of CIKM Cup 2016 is $ 5,000, and as a bonus - the opportunity to communicate with leading world researchers on Entity Linking, Online Advertising and Personalized Search from organizations such as Microsoft Research, Google Research, IBM Research, Stanford University, UIUC, UC Berkeley and others.

The duration of the competition - from August 5 to October 5, 2016. The best of the proposed technological solutions will be presented at the CIKM Cup Workshop at CIKM, open to the entire expert community and on the CIKM Cup website, as well as potentially become part of the solutions of DCA and DIGINETICA.

The tasks are interesting and non-trivial - you should take part at least in order to look at them and turn to the workers “living” data. Until all is lost, until October 5, you can join the competition and try your hand at the role of Data Scientist. At a minimum, it will be a strong experience, as a maximum - you will join the best minds of Big Data.

About CIKM say

Chengxiang Zhai | Professor at the University of Illinois, Chief Co-Chair of CIKM 2016:

“The CIKM Cup is one of the most important parts of the CIKM Conference, which further enhances the interaction between science and industry, providing unique opportunities for researchers and students to work on real business problems, to study complex problems that find real application in life. We are grateful to the organizers of the CIKM Cup (Pavel Izhutov and Nikita Spirin) for presenting two competitions to the participants, both of which reflect the real challenges of the industry and offer an excellent opportunity to learn about Data Science and explore new ideas on numerous topics that have important for CIKM, in particular, data mining, information retrieval, machine learning, and natural language processing.

We are also grateful to the partners of CIKM Cup, companies DCA, DIGINETICA, ChaLearn and Microsoft Research for providing the infrastructure and support that made these two competitions possible. These contests are a great way to integrate education, research and practice in big data, for the benefit of all. ”

James Shanahan | Doctor from the University of Berkeley in California, member of the supervisory board of CIKM:

“In order to be successful in the modern world, scientists and data analysts must constantly be in contact with industry and solve applied problems. CIKM Cup 2016 provides participants with a unique opportunity to solve two such tasks: Cross-Device Entity Linking and Personalized e-Commerce Search. I wish all the participants success! ”

Nikita Uchelev | DCA Analytics Director (Data-Centric Alliance):

“The world of technology has never had any limits - its driving force is the human mind and the desire to create and unite. With the advent of the data era, incredible opportunities open up for work, business, and social challenges. We at DCA are confident that only in constant contact with the international community can we create truly relevant technologies and we are pleased to have become partners with such an undoubtedly legendary event as CIKM Conference. ”

Dr. Nikita Spirin | Researcher from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, co-organizer of the CIKM Cup 2016:

“For representatives of the academy, access to data from the industry is a serious problem. Data analysis competitions, such as the CIKM Cup, allow university researchers to access such unique data, which in turn helps accelerate progress, test scientific ideas in detail, and finally create more useful and high-quality information products for the final users. As a co-organizer of the CIKM Cup 2016, I am very grateful to the partners of DCA and DIGINETICA for the open cooperation and support of the international scientific community. ”

Pavel Izhutov | Graduate student at Stanford University, co-organizer of the CIKM Cup 2016:

“CIKM Cup 2016 is a great annual tradition at one of the top data analysis conferences. I hope that the competition that we are holding this year will contribute to new scientific discoveries. I am very happy to be part of an undertaking that helps representatives of science and contributes to the development of high-tech business. ”

Thank you for your attention and success!