Accolades for School of IT student
Manelisi Ncube, an Information Systems and Computer Science student at UCT, is one of the winners of this year's Syft Analytics Hackathon.
The Syft Analytics Hackathon 2023 was open to third and fourth year students studying computer science, engineering, or any similar degree at a university in South Africa and took place between May and September 2023.The first round took place on the 20th of May with over 500 students participating. Only 50 qualified to go on the second round which took place in July.
"The timing of round two was unfortunate for me because it was during my month-long internship with Electrum during the winter vacation. I managed to get through to the last round, which was down to only the top 16 students," recalled Manelisi.
The final round required participants to design and create a full-stack web application from scratch in just seven days.
"Soon after receiving the specifications for the hackathon’s last round, I decided not to participate but rather focus on my course work. The following day however, it came to me that If I am to become a successful software engineer, I must get accustomed to working on multiple projects under intense pressure. So I decided to give it my best shot, putting in a lot of hours for the hackathon," said Manelisi.
A anxiety-filled week passed before Manelisi received an email letting him know that he had tied for the top spot with one other student.
"I was absolutely surprised to receive the email and I’m extremely happy to have represented UCT’s excellence in the competition."