At least 50 teams of techies from top engineering colleges in India will compete among themselves to find the most feasible and effective solutions to real world problems in a 36-hour long hackathon, Hack-A-BIT 2019, starting on Friday at Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Mesra.
The competition is aimed at finding innovative solutions to problems that plague the world by encouraging young minds to think out of their boxes, the organizers of the event said on Thursday.
The institute received more than 1800 registrations for this year’s Hack-A-BIT and shortlisted only 50 teams, said Kevin Mathew, a third year engineering student and one of the organizers of the event. The scope of this hackathon is not confined to technology. It instead focuses on finding solutions to a wide spectrum of issues related to the humankind, added Mathew.
“Last year, teams came up with innovative ideas to prevent floods and ways to help visually impaired people communicate more effectively,” said Mathew, adding that many innovative solutions provided last year were based on Artificial Intelligence (AI).The winner of the Hackathon will get a cash prize of Rs.40,000, the first runner up will get Rs.30,000 while the second runner up will win Rs.20,000. Cash awards will also be given away to the best all-girl team, the best hardware hack and the best garage article. This edition of Hack-A-BIT is supported by Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP).
It will be organized by the Institution of Electrical and Electronics (IEEE) Student Branch, Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), BIT Mesra and Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), BIT Mesra.
Senior engineers employed with technology giants such as Google and Bloomberg will form the jury for the event. Mayank Garg, a data scientist at Google; Nimesh Gilani, an engineer at Bloomberg; Aaquib Reza Khan, an engineer at Qualcomm and Kaustabh Karkare, a senior engineer at Facebook are among the judges this year.
The event will witness participation of teams from three Indian Institutes of Technology -- Indian Institute of Technology (ISM) Dhanbad, IIT, Kharagpur, IIT Roorkee. Besides, leading institutions such as Amity School of Engineering and Technology, Atal Bihari Vajpayee Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Bennett University, Bharati Vidyapeeth's College of Engineering, Delhi Technological University, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Kalyani, West Bengal, , Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology and National Institute of Technology Jamshedpur will also be a part of the event.
