CodeTheCurve Hackathon Teams Announced
On April 20, the UNESCO-organized CodeTheCurve announced the 40 teams selected to compete in the virtual hackathon created to combat COVID-19 through technological innovation.
Nearly 200 teams from across the world submitted videos to participate in the competition, and 40 teams from approximately 30 countries will compete for the grand prize. The teams, made up of students, educators, researchers, developers and data scientists, will compete across the three themes: education, information and data management, and health and social issues.
The education theme had 55 video submissions, including web solutions, mobile apps and e-campus solutions. The information and data science theme had 45 video submissions, which included tools to fight disinformation, cooperative platforms and data sharing. The health and social issues theme had 99 video submissions, which suggested solutions for leveraging community mutual aid in lockdown, employment issues and collaboration to improve access to healthcare.
The submissions targeted problems specific to many groups disproportionately affected by the pandemic, including the elderly, women and girls, youth, disadvantaged communities, victims of domestic violence, the medical community, and small business leaders. Issues addressed by the submissions included the impact of the virus on employment, information access, media misinformation, access to good and services, data management and sharing, psychological issues, and quality education.
The 40 teams selected to advance to the CodeTheCurve Hackathon, scheduled April 24-26, will learn from over 80 mentors and 20 speakers from IBM, SAP, UNESCO, and other industry thought leaders who will help them further develop their solutions. They will receive more than 20 hours of online training in tracks including design thinking, managing virtual and cross functional teams, conflict resolution, storytelling, personal branding, entrepreneurship, data protection and privacy, machine learning, artificial intelligence, media and information literacy, and more.
After the CodeTheCurve Hackathon, the teams will pitch their creative solutions through a video clip which will be rated by a jury from UNESCO, International Telecommunication Union, IBM Z, SAP, and others. Nine teams will be selected as finalists, three teams will be selected as the winners in each theme and one will be selected as the grand prize winner.
All winners will be announced on April 30. Prizes include one year of access to IBM LinuxONE community Cloud, six-month access to an IBM Z machine learning suite, one-year quarterly mentorship calls with IBM and/or its collaborators, six-month mentorship with SAP, pitch opportunities at IBM and SAP events, and access to SAP’s e-learning offering. The grand prize winners will receive an internship with SAP.