Team Catfish from Vietnam won the first prize at the ASEAN Data Science Explorers (ASEAN DSE) 2020 competition, which was jointly hosted by the ASEAN Foundation and its partner SAP.

In the final round, the top 10 teams representing the 10 ASEAN countries presented data-driven solutions that supports Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the region.

Team Catfish comprises Phung Tran Dieu Hoa and Nguyen Truong Thinh from RMIT University Vietnam. Their presentation focused on “People with Disability: Unblocking the Economic Bottleneck covering SDG 4 – Quality Education and SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth”.

The runner-up was Team Halcyon Seraph from the National University of Singapore and Yale-NUS University. Meanwhile, the third prize went to Team Psyduck from Brunei’s Teknologi University.

According to Thomas Zipperle, Chief Financial Officer of SAP Southeast Asia, the ASEAN DSE programme underpins the cultural diversity that SAP embraces in the ASEAN region.

SAP Analytics Cloud aims to narrow the digital gap in ASEAN and empower the youths to create sustainable innovations to address socio-economic issues, he stressed.

Meanwhile, Yang Mee Eng, Executive Director of the ASEAN Foundation, said the foundation and SAP share the common objective of equipping youths with future-ready skills that will enable them to thrive in the new normal era and support the theme of Vietnam's ASEAN Chairmanship, which is building a ‘Cohesive and Responsive ASEAN”

Since its inception in 2017, ASEAN DSE has been one of the most immersive platforms for ASEAN youth to hone 21st century skills through a combination of expert-led enablement sessions and a digital competition designed to challenge youth to solve pressing socio-economic issues in the ASEAN region through the lens of data analytics.

It has contributed to improving data analytics skills of ASEAN youths and promoting digital inclusion in the region.

To date, ASEAN DSE has empowered up to 16,309 students and 1,420 lecturers from 370 training institutions across ASEAN countries with data science skills. The programme will keep expanding its reach in the years to come by providing inclusive data analytics training opportunities to disadvantaged youths and students./.