Opportunity brief
Event Overview:
- Kharagpur Data Analytics Group (KDAG), IIT Kharagpur, presents DataForge 2026, a data science and analytics hackathon, designed to challenge participants with real-world data science and machine learning problems.
- Sponsored by Pathway and Rime.
- Prizes worth ₹3 lakhs up for grabs.
- An opportunity to compete with some of the brightest data science, analytics, and AI enthusiasts from across the country.
About Pathway:
- Pathway is a frontier AI company known for its Dragon Hatchling (BDH) architecture, a post-Transformer approach to AI.
- Its architecture keeps memory and reasoning within the model, enabling AI systems to adapt as information changes.
- Led by co-founder and CEO Zuzanna Stamirowska, alongwith Adrian Kosowski and Jan Chorowski (ex-researcher - Google Brain)
- Backed by leading AI researchers, including Łukasz Kaiser, co-author of the paper that introduced the transformer architecture.
About Rime:
- Rime is a voice AI platform focused on building natural, expressive, and ultra-realistic speech models for human-like conversations.
- Provides high-quality, low-latency text-to-speech (TTS) models designed for conversational AI applications at scale.
- Offers a wide range of production-ready voices (like Arcana, Mist) with support for multiple languages, distinct tones and personalities.
- Recently raised $24M in Series A funding and its voice models power enterprise applications across industries.
Who Should Participate:
- Individuals passionate about data science, AI, and machine learning.
- Participants interested in solving real-world problems using data-driven approaches.
Community:
- Join the Whatsapp Community for regular updates.
Team Composition:
- Maximum of four members per team, including the team leader.
- Teams are allowed to have members from different colleges.
Rules and Guidelines:
- Requests for team changes or member swaps immediately before or during the event will not be entertained.
- Any form of misbehavior, misconduct, or violation of the event rules may result in disqualification.
- Any dispute arising during the event will be resolved at the discretion of the organizers.
- The decision of the judges and organisers will be final and binding.
Final Note:
- Get ready to forge your ideas into data-driven solutions at DataForge 2026.
- Stay tuned for further announcements regarding registrations, problem statements, event schedules, resources, and other important updates.