Tech association ACS is hosting a major online hackathon over the Easter weekend with one goal in mind – to find ways to help ‘Flatten the Curve’ – reduce the infection rate – in the battle against coronavirus.
The #flattenthecurvehack runs for 48 hours from 6pm today, April 9, with more than 2000 competitors tackling 62 different challenges submitted by the tech community to help tackle the pandemic. The details are available on the #flattenthecurvehack website.
ACS Head of Data Science, Steve Nouri is leading #flattenthecurvehack
“I have been involved in more than 12 national and international hackathons in the past couple of years and I can testify that this is right now the largest hackathon we have ever had in the APAC region,” he said.
“We had less than two weeks to pull all of this together and I would like to thank all the ACS team for believing in the urgency, importance and impact of this effort.
“Over the next few days I will be personally curious to see what sort of innovations can arise, from IOT enhanced thermometers, crisis management software or even mental health checks: but I’m sure the most impactful one will be something none of us would’ve imagined.”
More than 150 mentors are involved in the Hackathon and chief mentor Janson Lim, said it was a privilege to lead an event with so much potential to help everyone.
“Not only for Australia in its healthcare, economic and social resilience, but also to potentially export these solutions all over the world,” he said.
“Inducting so many mentors who are volunteering their incredible time and experience is humbling to me and allows me to not only execute a better hackathon experience for the mentors, but also in my personal self-learning to meet domain experts from all sectors.”
Among those taking part, Mengyao Wang, who’s taking part in her first hackathon
“I’ve heard about them before, but I always thought that it was something more for computer science wizzes or programmers. But this challenge was different,” she said.
“I’ve already met some amazing tech and domain mentors who can bolster my design and humanitarian interests. I hope to see more of these happening and competing even more!”
Steve Nouri said one of the upsides to the negative impacts of Covid-19 was witnessing a huge bounce back from people tackling the issue head on.
“In just less than a week, a community of developers, data scientists, business experts, artists and students have come together online to contribute in any way possible to solve the problems we are facing locally in Australia and globally,” he said.
More on the #flattenthecurvehack here.
Trending
Daily startup news and insights, delivered to your inbox.