Illinois Tech AI in Data Privacy Hackathon

Date

On November 9, 2018, the AI in Data Privacy Hackathon was organized as part of the Global Cybersecurity Initiative Conference (GCSI 2018) held at Illinois Tech.

GCSI 2018 brought together technology leaders in the Chicagoland area and the Illinois Tech community including a number of academics and representatives from Industry and Government. The event focused on data privacy and innovation as part of a wider dialogue with industry leaders who manage compliance and interact with regulators on cyber security issues.

The centerpiece of GCSI 2018 was an award ceremony where results of the two-week long AI in Data Privacy Hackathon were announced. Several multidisciplinary teams of students from Illinois Tech’s College of Science, Armour College of Engineering and the Stuart School of Business competed against each other. Each team used natural language processing on a data set of approximately 500 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) notices from various websites informing visitors about compliance with GDPR. Using this data, the teams built supervised learning models to identify weaker and stronger GDPR notices. 90 Illinois Tech undergraduate and graduate students registered for the hackathon and 41 submitted solutions to the challenge. As part of the challenge, students read an academic engineering research article about GDPR and Artificial Intelligence (AI) that demonstrated an important bridge between AI and data privacy. Walk-in clinics were also provided to support students throughout the event.

  • Hackathon Award Ceremony: 1st Prize, graduate students Yaroslav Vergun (BADM, center left) and Bastien Segot (BADM, center right) with Associate Dean of the College of Science Robert Ellis (far right) and Bradley Schaufenbuel, VP-CISO, Paylocity (far left).
  • Hackathon Award Ceremony: 2nd Prize, CSCI graduate students Jay Rodge (left) and Aman Agarwal (right) with Associate Dean of the College of Science Robert Ellis (far right) and Bradley Schaufenbuel, VP-CISO, Paylocity (far left).
  • Hackathon Award Ceremony: 3rd Prize, graduate students Jayaprakash Kutala (BADM, left), Jay Patel (Finance, right) with Associate Dean of the College of Science Robert Ellis (far right) and Bradley Schaufenbuel, VP-CISO, Paylocity (far left). Graduate student teammates not pictured: Mathew Athoopallil (CSCI) and Divya Singh (ITMG).
  • Ed Lamark (M.S. Financial Markets & Trading, 1997) The Wealth Pool
  • Computer Science Visiting Fellow Anita Nikolich speaking on cryptocurrency and cybersecurity
  • Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Kassem Fawaz (UW-Madison) on AI and the changing landscape of privacy notice and choice
  • GDPR panel discussion with [left to right] Brian Jenkins (Business Block), Andrew Kumiega (Assistant Professor of Analytics, Stuart School of Business), Henry Beverly (Deputy CIO, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County), Shuchi Jain (M.S. Marketing & Analytics, Stuart School of Business), Maurice Dawson (Assistant Professor, Stuart School of Business), and Ed Lamark (The Wealth Pool).

Students participating in the hackathon were able to attend GCSI 2018 free of cost and received a certificate of attendance upon completing the full-day event. The hackathon award ceremony was attended by event sponsors and industry leaders including MHub, onShore Security, Aligned Security, ReliaQuest and many other innovation initiatives and foundations in the Chicagoland area. For a full list of sponsors of GCSI 2018, visit: http://www.gcsichicago.com/

GCSI 2018 fostered community-building and student networking and included a two-hour networking session with sponsoring companies and industry practitioners. A video of the event is currently available for the Illinois Tech community and the general public.

Brief remarks by Xiaofan Li, Interim Dean of the College of Science at Illinois Tech opened the conference and faculty from the Department of Computer Science, the Stuart School of Business, and the School of Applied Technology spoke during the conference. Coleman Foundation Clinical Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Stuart School of Business Nik Rokop and Associate Dean of the College of Science and Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics Robert Ellis kicked off the hackathon award ceremony and announced prizes won by the student teams. The event was organized by Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics Matthew Dixon, Associate Professor of Economics at the Stuart School of Business Liad Wagman and Rokop in partnership with the Pan Asian American Business Council.