"24-hour
programming" took on a new meaning recently as 55 students from
all over the world took part in Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar's
(CMU-Q) annual CarnegieApps Hackathon. Rather than watching
television all day and night, the students stayed up late to tackle
computer programming issues.
The event, sponsored by
Education Above All (EAA), the Qatar Computing Research Institute
(QCRI) and Cosette Solutions, challenges teams of students to work on
innovative solutions to modern-day problems.
“The
CarnegieApps Hackathon is an opportunity for students to demonstrate
everything they have learned to identify, tackle one of the
challenges the sponsors are experiencing, and apply their skills to
help solve that problem in a real-world context,” Dan Phelps,
associate professor of information systems at CMU-Q, said.
The
students came from Qatar, Kuwait, India and Australia. Haya Thowfeek,
an information management officer at EAA, said tapping into the minds
of the students is a valuable method to develop solutions.
“EAA
is currently working on a project called the Global Data Service that
aims to create a central hub of information with data on the number
of attacks on education,” Thowfeek said. “This will assist in the
EAA/PEIC (Protect Education in Insecurity and Conflict) mandate of
advocacy in defense of the right to education. The data service will
be used to raise awareness of attacks on education, promote legal
action and create response measures in the conflict zones. As a
systems developer and a CMU-Q alumna, I knew that students would be
able to come up with innovative solutions that will contribute to the
success of our project.”
For the first time,
Hackathon added a humanitarian technology category to the challenges.
Sponsored by PEIC, the category asked students to come up with
technological solutions to humanitarian issues around the world.
Competitive students prove they can hack it
