MANILA, Philippines - Students from premier Philippine universities, the University of the Philippines and the Ateneo de Manila University, will be the country’s first ever representatives to the 2013 Trend Micro Big Data Innovation Programming Contest in Taiwan this August. Two groups of students were hailed winners of the recently concluded local leg of the competition, held at TrendLabs, the Trend Micro Philippine headquarters. Team S.C.Z. from the University of the Philippines and Team Vivace from the Ateneo de Manila bested the eight other teams that made the national eliminations. Focusing on the Trend Micro Virus Infection Database, Team S.C.Z. presented an analysis method to further understand the behavior of viruses through the use of time series analysis. Team Vivace, on the other hand, presented their prototype of Tweet Eat. “It’s a Twitter Analysis for Restaurant Reviews that automatically analyzes tweets about restaurants, allowing people to easily see how people feel about a restaurant, and what words people most associate restaurant with,†says Tim Joseph Dumul, a fourth year BS Mathematics student of UP Diliman. “Trend Micro is optimistic with the solutions presented by our winning teams. We hope the Philippines wins the final round in Taiwan,†says Xavier Capilitan, senior manager for application control at TrendLabs, and the contest’s local technical lead.