Two Sunway Students are Masters of Code

Winning the Regional MasterCard Masters of Code Competition held in Singapore, two Sunway students, one from Sunway University and the other from Sunway College, with their high-calibre team of five demonstrated excellent computer science knowledge.

Following their regional victory, Leonardy Kristianto, 20, Sunway University’s BSc (Hons) Information Technology student and Lim Jay Ching, 19, former Sunway College A-level student who graduated in July 2014 and their team mates will be funded for the trip Silicon Valley for the Grand Finale Masters of Code hackathon in December. There, they will have the opportunity to meet and learn from Silicon Valley experts, participate in the MasterCard Priceless Experience tour of Napa Valley and San Francisco as well as stand a chance to win the Grand Prize of USD100, 000.

(L-R) Jay Ching Lim, Kean Ho Chew, Daniel Lim, Gwen Yi Wong, Leonardy Kristianto

The MasterCard Masters of Code Competition is a series of hackathons (an event in which computer programmers and others collaborate intensively on software and hardware development) which traverses the globe and gathers the very best coders.

“The competition lasted 25 hours. Each region had a special theme for the competition. For Singapore, it was ‘Using Commerce/Payments to Empower Women’. Each team with a maximum of 5 members was required to build a minimum viable product (a basic functional sample or prototype with a minimum set of functional features that demonstrates a product idea and allows customers to test or do a trial before deploying into production),” explained Lim, “To keep things fair, participants were not allowed to code beforehand. All started at the same time. No trainings were provided in advanced, however during the hackathon, talks about the MasterCard API (application programme interface) were given as guidance to develop our product.”

(L-R) Leonardy Kristianto, Jay Ching Lim Daniel Lim (front), Kean Ho Chew (back), Gwen Yi Wong, Karen Pascoe (SVP - Group Head, User Experience at MasterCard)

“Then we were assessed through pitching the demo of our project to the judges for two minutes followed by a one minute Q&A session. For us to win the competition, we went through two rounds of pitching. I recall that in our first pitch, one of our features triggered an error which put us into panic as we had only 30 minutes to debug the system and solve it before the finals. We managed to pull together in the end and it was really a close call!” described Leonardy.

Lim, being the youngest of the team was exposed to programming at the age of 12. He is the back-end developer and founder of the team. He met the other three teammates, two of whom are working adults relatively older than him, through a coding bootcamp of learning Ruby on Rails (a programming language). He approached them to form a team and join the MasterCard Masters of Code competition, which he discovered by coincidence via a Facebook group. Knowing the team was short of a front-end designer, he immediately invited Leonardy whom he knew for a year through a Sunway campus event.

A polaroid picture of the winning team

Although Leonardy joined the team just a day before the competition, the team clicked instantly. "We identified and recognised each other capabilities and started brainstorming throughout the bus journey from Malaysia to Singapore," said Leonardy, the marathon runner who is active in academic and extra-curricular activities such as volunteering for community services and designing the campus newsletter.

Both Leonardy and Lim enjoyed working with their team mates, who are relatively older and more experienced than them. They competed against 25 other teams in the Singapore competition with participants from very diverse backgrounds, some being experienced working adults at their 30s and top Singaporean universities students.

The winning team is looking forward to their Grand Finale Masters of Code hackathon in Silicon Valley

"I learn a lot about teamwork. We have amazing team dynamics: business and consultancy expertise, marketing and startup expertise, design and user experience expertise and programming expertise. We respect and trust each other," said Lim, the well-rounded lad who scored 4A* in his A-levels (Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry) and plays good piano as well as various sports.

The team is currently working on developing their hackathon skills multilaterally and dynamically. They are forming a startup with their winning project 'One Small Step' while negotiating a partnership with UN Women. "One Small Step is a learning platform for women to gain exposure in technology with familiar everyday applications," said Leonardy.

While preparing for their competition in Silicon Valley, Lim, the aspiring entrepreneur and professor, is ending his one gap year and waiting for offers to study Computer Science at National University Singapore and Nanyang Technology University. Leonardy, the wanna-be Silicon Valley's product designer with huge dreams of building technology community around Southeast Asia, will be finishing his undergraduate degree at Sunway University this year. He hopes to continue postgraduate degrees in the United States. Nevertheless, both the ambitious and passionate lads are looking forward to the grand finale.

Sunway University and Sunway College are proud of the students' exceptional achievements. The institutions continue to serve the community by nurturing more talented and well-rounded individuals like Leonardy and Lim.