With Singapore on Circuit Breaker mode, all schools and businesses are required to cease operations at least until 1 June.

Yet, despite the new challenges, the NUS Business Analytics Centre adapts to it by hosting their first NUS-EMC Innovation Challenge online, allowing students to pitch data-driven solutions that help improve real world problems in the Energy Markets.

On the 28 April, NUS Business Analytics Centre conducted the NUS-EMC Business Analytics Innovation Challenge, where eight teams participated in the finals to pitch innovative solutions to the Energy Market Company (EMC) in hopes to win a grand cash prize of $5,000.

The projects, which was presented in a panel of seven judges from EMC and NUS BAC, aim to solve EMC’s business challenge on developing a Uniform Singapore Energy Price forecasting model using datasets, artificial intelligence, and other predictive analytics to improve the accuracy of forecasts.

The teams were assessed based on strict criteria, including how innovative their approach was, the feasibility and reliability of the solution, as well as the creative use of data throughout the challenge.

After 5 hours of intense presentations, Team Stellar emerged as the champion, bagging the NUS X EMC Innovation Challenge trophy, and a cash prize of $5,000. Team Stellar’s solution involves a comprehensive end-to-end pipeline with commentary generation, and a robust dashboard visualisation to help with energy price forecasting.