Post by Yong Wei Chin

2 Competitions. 1 Week. A Crash Course in Maritime Logistics. 🚢⚓ The past week was a marathon of problem-solving. I challenged myself to compete in two consecutive maritime events: The SMU-BIA Cargill Datathon 2026 and the Maritime Hackathon 2026. Despite having zero prior industry background, I am thrilled to share that my team secured 2nd Runner-Up at the SMU-BIA Cargill Datathon 2026! 🥉 For the Cargill Datathon, our goal was to solve the complexity of commercial shipping workflows. We developed a Voyage Portfolio Optimiser that: 1. Evaluates every vessel-cargo combination for economic feasibility. 2. Stress-tests profitability against real-world risks like weather delays using Machine Learning models. 3. Explains the insights via a GenAI-powered dashboard, providing clear, data-driven recommendations to chartering managers. Immediately after the finalist presentation ended, the preparation for the Maritime Hackathon began that same night. We engineered a fleet optimisation model to meet MPA’s 2024 Bunker Sales Volume, balancing operational costs against safety scores (>= 3 out of 5) and fuel diversity. The biggest takeaway? We entered this week as complete outsiders. During the finals, we were asked who guided us through the maritime industry complexities. The honest answer: We had no mentors. We taught ourselves the domain knowledge from scratch, spending days deciphering acronyms and understanding trade-offs to ensure our solutions were commercially viable, not just mathematically correct. I would like to thank SMU Business Intelligence and Analytics for organising the SMU-BIA Cargill Datathon 2026 and the Cargill panellists for their valuable feedback. I would also like to thank the Centre for Maritime Studies for organising the Maritime Hackathon 2026, as well as the sponsor, Singapore Maritime Foundation (SMF). A massive shoutout to my teammates for the resilience and the steep learning curve we climbed together: 🙌 Datacamp Cadets (Cargill Datathon): Danvern Poo & ZHI KAI KOH 🙌 Aquamen (Maritime Hackathon): Jayden Lim