2025 IEEE International Conference on Big Data
8-11 December, 2025    Macau SAR, China

Call for Data Challenges

2025 IEEE Big Data Cup
https://bigdataieee.org/BigData2025/
Dec 8-11, 2025, Macau, China

We invite industrial, government, and academic organizations to submit proposals to organize a Data Challenge for the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (IEEE BigData 2025, https://bigdataieee.org/BigData2025/index.html). Data Challenges are analytics and programming contests based on datasets released by the organizations sponsoring the competitions. These contests will run for several months, with winners announced in the IEEE BigData 2025 in December 8-11, 2025 at Macau, China

The IEEE Big Data conference series started in 2013 has established itself as the top tier research conference in Big Data.

• The first conference IEEE Big Data 2013 (http://bigdataieee.org/BigData2013/ regular paper acceptance rate: 17.0%) was held in Santa Clara, CA from Oct 6-9, 2013 with more than 400 registered participants from 40 countries.
• The IEEE Big Data 2023 (http://bigdataieee.org/BigData2023/ , regular paper acceptance rate: 17.4%) was held at Sorrento, Italy, Dec 15-18, 2023 with close to 950 registered participants from 50 countries
• The IEEE Big Data 2024 (http://bigdataieee.org/BigData2024/ , regular paper acceptance rate: 18.4%) was held at Washington DC, USA, Dec 15-18, 2024 with more than 1300 registered participants from 53 countries

Strong proposals will release interesting and novel datasets to the participants and propose tasks that are challenging, yet achievable within the expected timeline. To encourage broad participation in the challenge competition, tasks and data should be made publicly accessible where possible.

We will consider topics from (but not limited to) the following big data application domains:

• Mobility
• Health and wellness
• Finance and Business Forecasting
• Advanced manufacturing
• Retail and e-commerce
• Smart City and Community
• Blockchain Technology
• Transportation and autonomous driving
• Cybersecurity, Cyber Intelligence and Defense
• Scientific Discovery
• Food, Nutrition and Environment
• Internet of Things Data Analytics
• Data science for equality, inclusion and well-being challenges
• Big Data Analytics for Humanitarian Crises
• Responsible AI and Data Ethics

The Challenges involve a released dataset and a well-defined problem with clear evaluation metrics. The challenges run on a data competition platform (e.g., Kaggle) that maintains a leaderboard for the participants. Final winners are selected based on their standing on the leaderboard, and a 6-page report describing their algorithms and results. There will be a workshop in the IEEE BigData 2025 conference in which the invited teams will be able to present their solution.

Tentative Competition Timeline

Step 1 - Solicitation of big data problems/topics, June 1, 2025
Step 2 - Proposal evaluation and selection of topics/problems, June 15, 2025
Step 3 - Data Release, Platform setup and solicitation of challenge participants, July 1, 2025
Step 4 - Deadline for contest teams to submit letter of intent, July 25, 2025
Step 5 - Deadline for contest teams to submit final report and solutions, November 15, 2025
Step 6 - Announcement of winning teams, Nov 25, 2025


Data Challenge Proposal Format

Proposals should answer the following questions:

• Who are the organizers? Provide the names, affiliations, contact information, and brief bio of the organizers.
• Which sector does the proposed Data Challenge belong to?
• What is the dataset to be released? If there are privacy concerns regarding the data, we advise that the organizers first seek clearance from the legal department of their organization regarding the dataset release.
• What prizes will be offered? Note that cash prizes will be shared between competitors and BigData, to defray the expenses of hosting demonstrations of the finalists' submissions at BigData.
• Do you require source code with submissions?


• Challenge Specific Questions:
• What are the task and the evaluation metrics?
• What competition infrastructure will be used? Our default hosting platform is Kaggle, which may impose fees to be borne by Challenge organizers. If you prefer to host it on your own infrastructure, specify the reasons and the resources you can commit for running the competition.

Deadline for proposal Submission: to be announced

Please submit the proposal: https://wi-lab.com/cyberchair/2025/bigdata25/scripts/submit.php?subarea=ProC