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Kubrick consultants hit the million-dollar jackpot being crowned first and third in the Partner Innovation category in TigerGraph’s Graph for All Million Dollar Challenge, winning a total of $14,000 dollars to donate to charities of their choosing.

The winning concept was an application that uses graph database and graph analytics to extract intelligence from data about organized crime gangs. The team's Anti-Mafia Analytics Platform is designed to take data about police officers’ raid statistics, wire-tapped phone calls and other data to identify “moles” within the police service who may be tipping off criminals about upcoming raids. However, the project could be extended to look for other patterns of nefarious relationships depending on police requirements.

Kubrick’s winning team was comprised of five of its Data Engineering consultants, William McCreery, Gilson Aquino, Sebastian Coles, Ashley Wijesuriya and Kate Pegrum who were tasked with completing the Million Dollar Challenge in the final two weeks of a 15-week training programme. The project was designed as a means to put their skills into practice and prepare them for the challenge of client work.

TigerGraph's Graph For All Million Dollar Challenge
First place winning consultants Ashley Wijesuriya (L), Sebastian Coles (M) and Kate Pegrum (R)


Consultants were tasked with not only learning the TigerGraph technology – applying it to their foundation of SQL, Python, and other core Data Engineering knowledge – but also working in scrum teams in the agile methodology to plan, design, and build their TigerGraph solution in a two-week sprint.

Together they came up with the idea of using data about organized crime gangs, along with telephone logs and success rates of police operations, to identify police officers who fit a pattern consistent with corruption.

William McCreery, a member of the winning team, said: “Graph was presented to us as this tool that you could use to pick out relationships between data really easily, so we immediately associated it with those cork boards that detectives use to draw connections between suspects using thumbtacks and string. Maybe that’s only something that happens in TV shows, but it made us think about what real-world situation could we apply that framework to.”

Teammate Sebastian Coles said: “I thought the project was a great insight into the client world because it was a time-pressured task to complete, and we really wanted to push ourselves to achieve something. It was a fantastic chance to apply our training at Kubrick to a tangible outcome like actually producing a data product at the end of our two weeks.”

The first place Kubrick team won $10,000 (USD) to donate to a charity of their choice. They have chosen to share the prize money across two charities, Prostate Cancer UK and NIA. They chose Prostate Cancer UK because of the team’s personal experience of it affecting their families.

The third place Kubrick team comprised of four Data Engineering consultants, Aidan Inceer, Rassan Rasheed, Matthew Crade and Hanako Takahashi-Johnson. The project drew inspiration from the Spotify App and aimed to improve people’s quality of life by enhancing their musical experience through increased interaction and the ability to find people with similar music tastes. They were awarded $4,000 (USD) have chosen to donate their prize money to Mind.

More information on the third place project can be found here.