Similarities and anomalies for MBZUAI’s winning pair

Spanning four continents, the all-female worldwide winning team at the recent virtual WomenHackAI featured two graduating master’s students from MBZUAI.The machine learning students – Saarah Abdulla (Canada) and Hanin Al Ghothani (Syria) – were teamed up with like-minded female colleagues including Nathanya Queby (Indonesia), Anne Krus (Germany), Gwladys Djuikom (Cameroon), and Mobina Mobaraki (Iran).

Presented by Siemens Female Data Science Network, five teams made up of 33 young data scientists had 48 hours to deliver AI solutions to five Siemens business challenges. Abdulla, Al Ghothani and their teammates on team Women in AI and Robotics took the 7000 euro prize for their anomaly detector on financial time-series datasets.

“The objective was to automate anomaly detection using AI and to eliminate manual monitoring,” Abdulla explained.

“We were given three datasets consisting of Siemens sales order intakes across different segments for 25 countries. Our solution was to develop several different models that could analyze the historical data, and pinpoint the presence of anomalies without having any previous exposure to labelled examples. The best method reached around 99% performance using a pre-set metric,” Abdulla continued.

“We also built a graphical user interface (GUI) in which real-time data could be uploaded and fed to our models, and the data is exported with anomalies flagged, which can be used to alert relevant parties and ensure data integrity for end-users.”

Both Abdulla and Al Gothani have been invited to present their solution to various Siemens business divisions as well as attend mentorship opportunities with the company’s AI leaders.

In only its second year, the WomenHackAI event was possible with the support of jury members and Siemens executives Susan Baumann, Ariane Sutor, Dr. Michael May, and Katrin Grunwald; tech coaches Katalin Westhoff, Simone K., Maria Sukhareva, Ella Türümina, Oliver D. and Marcel Kuhn; and team coaches Anna Wörner and Silvia Taschner.

O Canada Tech CEO Sheila Beladinejad gave the keynote address on how women in AI are key to reaching the world’s sustainable development goals.

Future leaders in AI

Abdulla and Al Ghothani are members of the university’s inaugural Class of 2022 and will graduate together on January 30, 2023. They both hold bachelor of science degrees in electrical and electronics engineering.

Abdulla has project management experience in the engineering, procurement, and construction industry while Al Ghothani worked as an electrical engineer in the mechanical, electrical and plumbing industry for several years.

Following graduation they hope to stay in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and pursue an industry career. Both have been granted a Golden Visa from the Abu Dhabi Residents Office.