Research & Innovation

CeADAR Selected as Global Nominee For NASA Space Apps Challenge

 Breaking News

CeADAR Selected as Global Nominee For NASA Space Apps Challenge

CeADAR Selected as Global Nominee For NASA Space Apps Challenge
October 25
09:49 2019

A team from CeADAR – Ireland’s national centre for Applied Data Analytics & AI – has been selected as a Global Nominee in the NASA International Space Apps Challenge. NASA’s International Space Apps Challenge, which started in 2012, has become the world’s largest global hackathon with thousands of people across the globe using NASA’s open data to build innovative solutions for challenges we face on Earth and in space.

The global hackathon took place from October 18 to 20 at hundreds of locations across the world. The selected teams now have to pitch to NASA this Sunday, October 27.

The team of expert CeADAR staff – Aditya Grover, Lauren Burnham-King, Saad Shahid and Manokamna Singh – along with Housam Ziad from Oracle was nominated for their Lemon-Aid platform.

Lemon-Aid aims to identify the most vulnerable populations in the conflict region around Syria who may need humanitarian aid in various forms and was selected as a global nominee under this year’s category of ‘From curious minds come helping hands’.

The challenge was to design and build an innovative platform to integrate satellite data and information about vulnerable populations and environmental hazards in order to identify the most at-risk populations – within 48 hours. This global hackathon took place from October 18 to 20 at hundreds of locations around the world.

The Irish aspect of the competition was held at WeWork in Charlemont Exchange in Dublin. Lemon-Aid was nominated to move to the second round, which will see the team of five putting together a 30-second online pitch for NASA scientists.

CeADAR along with the other nominated teams will submit videos to NASA this Sunday, October 27. CeADAR is a market-focused technology centre for innovation and applied research in AI, Machine Learning and Data Analytics. It is an Enterprise Ireland and IDA-funded Technology Centre, has more than 80 member companies across a wide span of industries.

In December, 30 projects from around the world will be awarded the title of Global Finalists. Six will then be chosen from the 30 finalists as Global Winners in a variety of categories. The six winners will be announced in January 2020.

The Global award-winning projects will be featured on the Space Apps website and the teams will receive an invitation to visit NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with the Space Apps Global Organizing Team in 2020.

Data Scientist at CeADAR Aditya Grover said: “The main challenges the team faced during the 48-hour hackathon was deciding how to narrow down the scope of our project and gathering appropriate data for our platform as there is a plethora of sources available with different formats, types and access issues, and combining these sources into an aggregated form.”

The team built an initial online platform including conflict data, refugee camps, population density and humanitarian aid information on interactive plots. There are plans to develop the platform further by using data from various NGOs as well as environmental and geographical data with a focus on Syria and the surrounding region.

CAPTION:

Team members (L-R): Aditya Grover (CeADAR), Lauren Burnham-King (CeADAR), Housam Ziad (Oracle), Saad Shahid (CeADAR), Manokamna Singh (CeADAR).


Warning: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable in /home/researchandinnov/public_html/wp-content/themes/legatus-theme/includes/single/post-tags.php on line 5
Share

About Author

editor

editor

Related Articles

Upcoming Events

[eventlist]

The Magazine

Advertisements