This post is for both the organizers and fellow competitors! As a U.S. (undergraduate?) university competition, I think it is clear that NASA wants to foster education and training in the machine learning field. In keeping with this spirit, I wonder if it would make sense if we organize a little virtual get-together after the competition, where fellow competitors with like-minded interests and passions can make some connections with each other and share some common pitfalls, ideas (code need to be published MIT licnesed anyways so it’s not like the ideas can be intellectual property), and experiences.
To the organizers:
Tooting my own horn a little, I think all of the discussion here from fellow competitors and all of our scores speaks for itself that we are passionate programmers and future machine learning/data engineers who love what we do! Judging by our participation on this competition, I think many of us are also passionate about the opportunities that lie between the intersection of Computer Science and its use in National Air Space (NAS), drones, and other aerospace applications. It would be cherry on top if maybe we can bring in some machine learning subject matter experts from NASA to talk about their experiences in the field, share some opportunities at different NASA locations/centers, and allow us to make some connections and learn more about future opportunities after the competition!
Obviously, we have all put in a lot of work to maximize our probability of success (our average lowest score) but the truth is that in the end who wins and who loses will probably be down to a couple +/-.01 loss that can easily be attributed to variance. In the spirit of the competition set up no matter who wins or loses, I think in the long run this might be helpful to myself and all my fellow competitors.
Open to suggestions, ideas and updates from both organizers and competitiors :).
Ad astra!