Student IT Architecture Competition

SITAC 2024

...Highlights...

SITAC 2023

...Highlights...

The 2023 SITAC competition successfully culminated with a the online grand finale on 5/21/2023.

SITAC 2022

...Highlights...

The 2022 SITAC competition successfully culminated with the grand finale on 5/15/2022. Twenty teams representing a mix of graduate students from University of Washington, Seattle University, Minnesota State University and Carnegie Mellon University participated in this year's competition. Thirteen made it to the final presentations. Just like the 2021 competition, the entire 2022 competition was conducted in an online format due to COVID restrictions, yet the event saw the same enthusiasm and dedication from students, mentors and everybody else involved. 

Problem Statement: Driving personal sustainability for environmental change

Winners:

• First Place

• Team-  Outback Pack, Carnegie Mellon University -- Daniel Zellmer, Neo Chen, Peng Dou

• Mentor - Raj More, Costco Wholesale

• Second Place

• Team- WAWA, Carnegie Mellon University --  Aaron Techaratsami, Ashlyn Im, Wei Hou Chu

• Mentor- Nick Malik, Infosys

• Third Place

• Team- Team Ally, University of Washington -- Wenyue Li, Wenbin Li, Ning Yi

• Mentor- Kevin Jennings, Costco Wholesale

Judges

• Akshay Darbari, Director of Engg, Premera

• George Symons, VP Strategy for Cloud, Persistent

• Prasad Joshi SVP, Infosys

Evaluators

• Fred Hennige, Starbucks

• Leighton Carr, Boeing

• Prasanna Gaitonde, Amazon

• Rahul Padhye, T-Mobile

• Susheel Elango, Infosys

• Urmi Kavi, PSE

• Vasudev Sharma, lululemon

Leaders Panel:

• Isabel Niu, VP of Technology, Global Arch and Innovation, lululemon

• Terry Williams, CIO, Costco Wholesale

• Vijay Mittal, CVP, AI Architecture and Strategy, Microsoft

• Vivek Dixit, Growth Leader, Ex. VP Global Advisory Services, Gartner

The competition marathon started in Dec 2021 and ended in May 2022. The solution architecture was built through the following deliverables:

• 1. Scope, Epics and User Stories

• 2. Business process and UI/UX 

• 3. Software and Data Architecture

• 4. Security and Deployment Architecture

• 5. Technology Stack, Architecture Execution plan and Operationalization

• 6. Final Presentation and Poster

Each student team worked with a mentor from the industry. Here's the list of the mentors for 2022 competition.

SITAC - 2021

The teams participating in the 2021 SITAC represented a mix of graduate and under graduate students from University of Washington, Seattle University, University of California Riverside, Minnesota State and Lewis and Clarke College. The entire competition as well as the final rounds were conducted in an online format. The grand finale of SITAC 2021 concluded on 5/8/2021. 

Problem Statement: Digital Minimalism

Winners:

• First Place

• Team-  Pink Chaos, Seattle University -- Anna Mendes, Carrie Schaden (Seattle University Newsletter)

• Mentor - Samir Shilamkar

• Second Place

• Team- Matrix, University of Washington -- Bahny Das, Malvika Nandakumar, Nicolas Griffin

• Mentor- Manish Jain

• Third Place

• Team- Nimble Sages, University of Washington -- Nidhi Pancholi, Nam Saxena, Santhoshi Kuruvella

• Mentor - Ramesh Ganesh

Judges

• Akshay Darbari, Principal Architect - Infosys

• Rajesh Naidu, VP Data Analytics, Enterprise Architecture & Emerging Technology - Starbucks

• Lindsay Hua, VP Global Deployment - Afiniti

Evaluators

• Sunil Joshua, Infosys

• Leighton Carr, Boeing

• Sushil Elango, Infosys

• Rahul Padhye, T-Mobile

Panelists

• Prasad Joshi, Sr. VP - Emerging Technology Solutions

• Lynn Almoro, VP - Chief Architect - United Healthcare Platforms

• Raveesh Mayya, Technology Professor - NYU Stern School of Business

• Elizabeth Scallon, Startup and Innovation Ecosystem Builder

• Dr. Roshanak Roshandel, Technology and Product Lead, Amazon

Guest Speaker

• Dr Anurag Mairal, Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign

SITAC - 2020

We concluded the 5th year of the competition successfully in spite of the pandemic conditions. The competing student teams and mentors put in a committed effort and completed the solution deliverables on time. The competition commenced on November 14, 2019 with 101 students from 9 campuses and the teams completed their deliverables by March 25, 2020. We had to move the finale to completely online. The final event was a collaboration of over 75 people presenting from different locations in and outside the United States! A heartfelt thank you for the amazing collaboration and participation of judges, evaluators, panelists, keynote speaker and most importantly, the students and mentors!

Problem Statement: Learning management system

Winners:

• First Place

• Team-  Firefly, CMU — Ajay Nair, Vaithyanathan Narayanan, Vivek Gupta (CMU Newsletter)

• Mentor- Anirudh Mukhopadhyay

• Second Place

• Team- Ocho, University of Washington — Alyssa Vahratian, Nat Anderson, Suhong Qi

• Mentor- Mohan Prabhala

• Third Place

• Team- Observers, University of Washington — Eddy Zeng, Lei Guo, Yiwei Xu

• Mentor- Manish Jain

Judges

• Akshay Darbari, Infosys

• Jennifer Gresham, Work for Humanity

• Wei Manfredi, Lululemon

Keynote Speaker 

• Leighton Carr, Chief Architect, Boeing

Panelists

• Fred Hennige, Alaska Airlines

• Jennifer Gresham, Work for Humanity

• Rajesh Naidu, Starbucks

• Vinay Kshirsagar, T-Mobile

SITAC - 2019

The fourth Student IT Architecture Competition (2018-2019) was conducted from November 2018 through April 2019. We had 51 teams registered comprising of  146 students from 10 schools, of which 24 teams reached the finals. Each team had an industry practitioner as a mentor. There were 41 mentors from 20 different organizations.  The final event featured 3 judges and 17 speakers.

Problem Statement: Anti Bullying Report and Support System

Winners:

• First Place

• Team-  Anything Possible, University of Washington - Andrew Vermehren-Shepler, Chengyan (Lesley) Lin, Rahul Chaturvedi.

• Mentor- Shane Fisher

• Second Place

• Team- Spartans, CMU - Jian Fu, Rishabh Panwar, Suryansh Soni

• Mentor- 

• Third Place

• Team- DinfraX, University of Washington — Jing Xu, Ramie Kamarakeh, Yutin Zhan

• Mentor- Nick Malik

Judges

• Akshay Darbari, Infosys

• Gabriel Morgan, Starbucks

• Sameer Khera, Symantec

Keynote Speaker 

• Rick Kazman, Professor, Researcher and Author

Panelists 1

• Mary Gardner, CISO - F5 Networks

• Vani Mandava, Director data science - Microsoft

• Patty Bauer, VP - Costco Wholesale

• Mamatha Banerjee, Senior Director of Technology - Expedia

• Pam Dibbs, Found - Dibbs on Life

Panelists 2

• Ben Ravanni, SVP - Nutanix

• Warren McNeel, SVP - T-Mobile

• Sanjeev Gupta, SVP - Wallero

• Charu Jain, CIO - Alaska Airlines

• Chuck Markarian, CISO - Paccar

• Sameer Manjure, CEO - Kensci

Panelists 3

• Sarah Mocke, CTO - Microsoft

• Elizabeth Phan, Regional VP - L&T Infotech

• Paul Moulton, EVP and CIO, Costco Wholesale