Nearly 200 students will participate in the online hackathon at TUES this year

26.02.2021

The seventh edition of the student hackathon Hack TUES, organized by the students of the Capital City Technical University "Electronic Systems" (TUES) at the Technical University - Sofia, will be held entirely online this year. Nearly 200 students will participate in the programming competition, and dozens of mentors - professionals from various IT companies, as well as volunteers who graduated from the school, will help the young programmers work successfully remotely. The students from the hackathon's organizational team have also prepared a series of online seminars for their classmates. In them, they will present topics such as artificial intelligence, game development, embedded microcomputer systems, working with Git and GitHub, as well as presentation skills. "These preparatory meetings started in the middle of February," TUES explains. 193 students in 45 teams will participate in the hackathon. The theme on which they will work will be announced at the opening on March 11 at 18:00 on the TUES YouTube channel. Immediately after the opening, the participants will meet online with experts on the hackathon topic. Thus, they will become familiar with the specifics and main challenges in the specific sector, and will have the opportunity to address certain public needs through their high-tech projects. "In this way, the best projects will be given a chance to receive support for their full implementation and application in practice," the organizers state. The students will have two days to prepare their software and hardware projects (March 12 and 13). On March 14, 2021 (Sunday), the semi-finals and finals of the competition will be held. At the end of the day, the winners will be announced. The final and the award ceremony will also be broadcast live on the TUES YouTube channel from 20:00. The teams ranked first, second, and third will win prizes in the amount of 1000 BGN, 750 BGN, and 500 BGN, respectively, which will be given in the form of scholarships. All other teams will receive prizes provided by the hackathon sponsors. In 2021, the hackathon is supported by Chaos Group, Experian Bulgaria, SAP, TelebidPro, VMware Bulgaria, A1 Bulgaria, Nemetschek Bulgaria, Strypes, Astea Solutions, Bosch.IO, CPD Ltd., DevriX, Dopamine, and Paysafe. The Hackathon at TUES is the first and only one of its kind in Bulgaria, organized by students for students. It started in 2015 as an initiative of students from TUES. Among the awarded projects in Hack TUES in previous years are an automated system for package delivery with drones, a 60-year-old radio that uses new technologies, a Chrome browser extension that checks whether the content a person is reading is propaganda, a modern water meter with a display showing current and monthly water consumption, a project for virtual representation of a high-tech home, an embedded device with a camera and artificial intelligence to assist visually impaired people, a platform for solving geometric problems, a system for tracking product authenticity in retail, an application for text summarization using neural networks, and a 2D simulation of a genetic algorithm. Today, Hack TUES is one of the emblematic platforms for student expression - both as participants in the competition and as volunteers and organizers of this large-scale event. "The seventh hackathon at TUES is proof that students' enthusiasm knows no bounds. Even in an online format, the competition maintains high standards for participants and has excellent organization, thanks to the student organizing team. We thank the business community and all volunteers who continue to support this landmark event. We expect to see again at the end of the competition exceptionally creative projects implemented at a high technological level," said Assoc. Prof. Dr. Eng. Stela Stefanova, Director of the Technological University "Electronic Systems" at the Technical University - Sofia.

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Computerworld.bg, 26.02.2021