Stellenbosch University graduates Lizé Steyn and De Wet Denkema, both from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, have been crowned champions of this year’s FNB South Africa DataQuest competition.
Lizé is currently pursuing her master’s degree while De Wet completed his last year under supervision of Prof Herman Engelbrecht, head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. This win showcased their exceptional data science expertise in a challenging real-world scenario. Their win is a testament not only to their individual talent but also to the strength of Stellenbosch’s engineering programme.
The FNB DataQuest: A Proving Ground for Data Talent
FNB DataQuest is a two-day virtual event hosted by FNB South Africa. It provides a platform for aspiring data scientists to:
- Tackle Real-World Challenges: Work on problems sourced directly from FNB’s analytics team, gaining valuable hands-on experience.
- Learn from Industry Leaders: Attend masterclasses and network with seasoned professionals to enhance their knowledge and skills.
- Showcase Expertise: Present their innovative solutions to a panel of judges and fellow data enthusiasts.
The event combined a data science competition with masterclasses, networking opportunities, and a keynote address.
The Quest
As part of the FNB DataQuest, participants were tasked to work on actual problems encountered by FNB’s own analytics teams. Lizé explained:
“These tasks were not easy but we have been provided some very useful masterclasses and could ask questions to our subject matter experts. We were provided with a dataset consisting of ~400,000 interactions from FNB’s banking app. We settled on a hybrid recommender system model, which incorporates user and item features into the user-item interaction matrix to improve the accuracy of recommendations. We then had to present our approach to a board of judges via a narrated presentation.”
Congratulations Lizé Steyn and De Wet Denkema! We’re excited to see what you do next!
De Wet Denkema & Lizé Steyn
