Data Science Bowl Yields 68K Algorithms and 1 Big Biomedical Break

After 90 days and 288,000 working hours, the much-discussed fourth annual Data Science Bowl has ended. Run by Booz Allen Hamilton and Kaggle, the contest resulted in 68,000 algorithms, 3 winners, and one tantalizing opportunity for biomedical research. The goal of this year's Data Science Bowl was to build artificial intelligence (AI) systems that could automate what organizers called a "critical component of biomedical research." As such, 18,000 competitors spent months honing deep-learning models to scrutinize images of cells in search of nuclei, all without aid from humans. The ensuing algorithms are expected to salvage hundreds of thousands of hours each year, time that was previously burned by researchers who were forced to perform the task, according to the organizers.