New Delhi, Feb 9 (IANS): US-based Graph analytics platform TigerGraph on Wednesday launched "Graph for All Million Dollar Challenge" -- a global competition that will search for innovative ways to harness the power of graph technology and machine learning to solve real world problems.

The challenge will bring together brilliant minds to build innovative solutions to develop a better world and solve real world issues using graphs.

The global virtual challenge is open to tech professionals, data scientists, engineers, university students, and researchers interested in discovering what is possible with graphs and AI.

The contestants will be judged based on the project's impact, creativity, boldness, and adaptability.

Winners across four main categories will be announced this May at the 2022 Graph + AI Summit, the largest open industry event for graph and AI organised by TigerGraph. They will be presented $1,000,000 in cash prizes.

"Every day, more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are produced -- that's 18 zeroes. Within this data are answers to critical health, climate, and business-related questions, and graph technology identifies those patterns across and within the data to find the answers," said Dr Yu Xu, founder and CEO of TigerGraph, in a statement.

"We're giving one million dollars to innovators who push the boundaries of graph and AI technology to uncover new, transformational ways to solve real world issues. The challenge is officially on and we look forward to seeing thousands of registrants, hundreds of mind-blowing entries, and countless new ideas and concepts," Xu said.

Graphs are now considered a must-have technology in modern enterprises. The technology is making a difference for companies under tremendous pressures brought on by the pandemic.

Over the past 18 months alone, TigerGraph's technology empowered medical providers to make real-time care recommendations to millions of patients, fuelled countless Covid-tracking initiatives, and helped businesses save hundreds of millions of dollars by improving their supply chain decisions.

Registration for the challenge opened on Wednesday and the final submission deadline is April 20.

The judging committee includes the world's brightest and most recognizable data scientists, professors, PhD's, distinguished engineers, and founders of global companies focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), analytics, knowledge graph, and other industry experts with deep knowledge of graph technology, graph use cases, and graph deployments.

Notable panelists include Usha Rengaraju, Principal Data Scientist and founder of NeuroAI; Juan Sequeda, Principal Scientist at data.world; Dan McCreary, Distinguished Engineer in AI, Optum; James Pang Yan, PhD, Co-Director, Master of Science in Business Analytics at National University of Singapore; Ashleigh Faith, Director, Knowledge Graph and Semantic Search at EBSCO; and Ellie Young, Founder at Common Action.

The global virtual challenge is open to tech professionals, data scientists, engineers, university students, and researchers interested in discovering what is possible with graph and AI.

Notable partners participating in the challenge include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Google Dev Library, data.world, GitHub, Kubrick Group, Microsoft Azure, Plotly, and Women Who Code.

"India's AI prowess is emerging as demonstrated by AI-focused innovation. The Graph for All Million Dollar Challenge is an outstanding opportunity for Indian innovators to apply graph to their problem-solving techniques and win a huge prize too," added Khushal Bhansali, Country Manager, TigerGraph India.