FUTA Final-Year Student Clinches Runner-Up Spot at 2024 SPE Africa Region Datathon

Emmanuel Ogunnubi, a final-year student from the Department of Applied Geology at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), has emerged as the first runner-up in the prestigious 2024 Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Africa Region Datathon Competition. The competition, sponsored by Chevron, took place at Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos, from August 5 to 7, 2024, with over 260 contestants from across Africa.

Ogunnubi, who was thrilled to secure second place, highlighted the intense competition and the challenge presented. Contestants were tasked with solving real-time oil and gas production problems using machine learning models. "I preprocessed the dataset, split it into training and evaluation sets, and used algorithms such as Random Forest, XGBoost, and Artificial Neural Networks to predict oil, gas, and water production volumes," Ogunnubi explained.

His entry, consisting of Jupyter notebooks containing Python code and a presentation, impressed the panel of judges, earning him the prestigious runner-up position. Ogunnubi expressed gratitude for the opportunity, stating, "It is an honor to have participated in this competition and to be recognized among the best from across Africa."