Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVISInstitute News
The participants of the festive event at the Cognitive Systems Lab (CSL) of the University of Bremen to honor the best teams of the Basic Track of the Bremen Big Data Challenge 2025.
First place in the MEVIS Challenge “Clinical Decision Support for Doctors” went to the Innovative Rübenköpfe & Team BigData-SmallBrains 2 team from Schulzentrum am Rübekamp and Gesamtschule Bremen Ost.
On April 29, the festive closing event of the Basic Track of the Bremen Big Data Challenge (BBDC) 2025 took place at the Cognitive Systems Lab of the University of Bremen, where the best contributions to the programming competition were awarded. The BBDC Basic Track is initiated and materially enabled by the Bremen Stock Exchange Foundation (BWB). It is jointly organized by the Cognitive Systems Lab (CSL), the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS.
The challenge offers students from Bremen the opportunity to compete with their peers and learn about fields of application and methods of artificial intelligence (AI). This year, there were four tasks to choose from: in the CSL track, the task was to classify motion data using AI-supported analyses; in the ZARM track, participants were able to develop a water recycling system or design a roadworthy rover for Mars explorations; in the MEVIS track, AI models were trained on the basis of health data to predict complications after a heart attack. Eight Bremen schools are part of the project, with a total of 21 teams taking part in the competition. From September 2024 to January 2025, the students worked independently on their solutions in small teams.
Heinz Brandt, Chairman of the BWB Foundation, drew a positive conclusion from this year's project: “It has once again been shown that there is a considerable number of high-performing and capable school students at Bremen schools who can also be measured in professional competition. I was also personally very pleased with the high standard of the tasks and solutions. As the BWB Foundation, we will continue to support the project in the coming year.”
The BBDC makes an important contribution to promoting young STEM talent in Bremen. The Schüler:innen Challenge is part of a long-term commitment to promoting young STEM talent. “With the challenge, we want to generate enthusiasm for research and development,” says Anna Rörich, mathematician at Fraunhofer MEVIS. “The application focus is intended to show young people at an early stage that there are many paths into healthcare besides studying medicine,” affirms Prof. Matthias Günther, Deputy Director at Fraunhofer MEVIS.
To ensure that the challenge has a lasting impact in Bremen, preparations are already underway for the BBDC 2026 Basic Track, which will start in the summer.
The winning teams at Fraunhofer MEVIS:
1st place: Team Innovative Rübenköpfe; Schulzentrum am Rübekamp and Team BigData-SmallBrains v2; Gesamtschule Bremen-Ost
2nd place: Team Data Detectives; Gymnasium Horn
3rd place: Team Nabd; Oberschule an der Egge
Fraunhofer MEVIS congratulates all the winning teams and would like to thank all the participants, teachers and partner institutions who made this initiative possible.