The Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology announces the completion of the Skoltech Hackathon 2.0 which took place on 30 November – 1 December 2013 at Digital October, API Moscow located at the address: 2/1 Bersenevsky side street, Moscow.
The Skоlteсh Hасkаthоn 2.0 was held at the initiative of Skoltech students, who were the main organisers of the event. They used the experience that they had gained at the international hackathons in the USA, where in 2012 they became winners in a similar competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The theme of the Skoltech Hackathon this time was education: its Russian specificity, the existing topical problems, as well as the possible ways of addressing them.
More than 100 people took part in the Hackathon, including Russian and foreign students, the staff of such companies as Parallels, Mail.ru, Mosenergo and some others, as well as young scientists and IT startup founders.
There were 23 teams which worked 24 hours in a row without a break, which was one of the conditions of the competition. During that time, the participants created a wide variety of projects and their prototypes which were then submitted to a competent jury for assessment.
“The ideas of the participants were consistent with the problems existing in the market. I, for example, would single out such a topical problem as big data – these days, searching for relevant information for the solution of a specific task among all that mass of information available to us is a big problem for many. If the guys continue working in this direction, they have a lot of potential,” said Andrei Ivanov, COO of JetBrains.
There were 3 winning places as well as prizes in 3 nominations: Tools in the Sphere of Education, Best Social Project, and Open Information of the Educational Process. The winners of the Skoltech Hackathon 2.0 were DreamTeam with the project SkThread designed to help students and schoolchildren decide on their future profession. Second place was awarded to the KiсkAss team, and E-team were third. Skoltech students were actively involved in the development of the projects – there were students from Skoltech among the members of two of the six finalist teams, including the winning project SkThread.
The experts and mentors of the competition were specialists in various fields, among them: Dmitry Peskov, Director for Young Professionals (ASI Directorate); Martin Gitsels, Director General of the Siemens Research Centre; Svetlana Infimovskaya, Deputy Executive Director of the Association of Innovative Regions of Russia (AIRR); Andrei Ivanov, COO of JetBrаins; Dmitry Burkovsky, Vice President of Xsоllа; and Andrei Barkin, Director for Strategic and International Programmes, SKOLKOVO business school.
“I am very pleased with the projects which were presented at the Skоlteсh Hасkаthоn today. Many of them were very promising and well developed as well, considering such a short period of time that they had. I believe in the market potential of some of them,” said Martin Gitsels, Director General of the Siemens Research Centre.
The event was sponsored by JetBrаins, Siemens, SmartStep and the Moscow Innovation Development Centre. Its information partners were SmartStep, Sports.ru, Runa Capital, the Yopolis project, Changellence and others.
The Skоlteсh Hасkаthоn 2.0 culminated with the awards ceremony for the winners and participants, as well as the discussions of each project during personal conversations: the mentors and experts gave team members their professional opinions and advice, evaluated the market potential of their projects and discussed the implementation of the new ideas of the tireless Hackathon participants.
Information for reference:
Hackathon is a two-day competition during which students and specialists in the field of information technology (programmers, designers and managers) set up teams and work together on the solution to some problem. Their goal is to create a prototype of a solution within 24 hours from scratch and to submit it to the jury for assessment. The work of the Hackathon can result in the creation of real products which could be realised in the market in the nearest future.
The Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) is a private educational research university located near the village of Skolkovo, in the suburbs of Moscow. Established in 2011 in collaboration with the MIT, Skoltech will be engaged in training the next generation of researchers and entrepreneurs, broadening the scope of their scientific knowledge and encouraging the development of technological innovation in order to find solutions to the most critical scientific and technical problems facing Russia and the whole world in the new millennium. The work of the Institute is based on the best traditions of the Russian and international educational and research practices of the twenty-first century, with special emphasis on business and innovation activities.
Contact information:
Skoltech Communications
+7 (495) 280 14 81
