Students from KPI TUKE showed extraordinary results in the HACKATHON 2020


Young people have the potential to achieve great things in innovation

Hackathon 2020 had a different atmosphere this year. Due to the pandemic situation, we had to move the competition completely to an online space. 140 students from the Department of Computer Informatics (Faculty of electrical engineering and informatics) created 27 teams on their way to win the Hackathon 2020. Great organization, interesting prizes, and willingness to succeed brought very powerful results in the end.

An interesting presentation from the speakers covered the educational part

Within the Hackathon, we wanted to bring on the stage not only the competition itself but also the educational part for students. We were very pleased to host our external speaker Barbora Ruscin (Chief Experience Officer at Tatra Banka) with the presentation on the topic – PITCHING YOUR IDEA IN A VIRTUAL SPACE and Dusan Kocurek (Agile Mentor, from ScrumDesk) with the topic – HACK YOUR MIND, HACK YOUR RESULTS.

Working on the challenges

Teams worked all week on the pre-defined challenges:

1. Smart City&IoT (Smart City and Internet of Things)

2. Health (Digital Health and Telemedicine)

3. Smart University (Digital Making and Digital Learning)

Each morning started with stand-up for the teams and in the afternoon we have checked the codes in Github. On Friday, December 4, the judges chose 12 teams that could present their hot ideas on the final Big Pitch on Monday, December 7.

And who made it to the final?

1st place won the team with Get Help application, helping students with their homework, studies, and other student topics from the university.

In the category Smart City: The Team with Signica application – management and correction of traffic signs.

In the category Smart Uni: The Team with an application Canteen Take Away. The application allows to order the food from the canteen upfront and pick up the lunch from the locked boxes.

In the category, Health succeeded the SmarTLy application providing a green wave on the traffic lights for ambulances in case of emergency.

We asked our Judges and Organizers 4 questions:

1.What are your impressions of the event?

“I was surprised by the innovation potential of the students and their passion. I liked that they decided to reflect current “hot topics” like COVID-19 in their prototypes.”  Igor Stancik, Head of CLASSIC IT Slovakia

2.Why have you decided to add the educational part – external speakers to the Hackathon?

“In most hackathons, we have seen, that many participants are not ready for such an event. Mostly it's about "first-timers". So we decided to help them with topics, we consider a must for everyone, who wants to participate in the hackathon. Those topics are currently two - the Minimal Viable Product because mostly "first-timers" are trying to solve all the problems of life, the universe, and everything in 24 hours, and about the Presentation Mastery, because we have seen too often just a traditional product presentation.”Mirek Binas, Assistant professor

3. How do you rate the student's knowledge and technical level of skills?

"Technically I am happy that I could see functional prototypes, not only mock-ups. In the future perhaps more AI and analytic tools could be explored, but the level is already set quite high." Martin DzborChief Strategy and Technology Offices,

4.What are the main benefits of the Hackathon?

“It is a great experience for the students to participate in such a hackathon because they need to push themselves beyond their comfort zone to survive challenges and successfully compete with other teams. They need to bring the best of their knowledge to create working prototypes. An additional benefit is that they also get hints and tips and webinars. It is worth continuing in Hackathon for the next years to build to the talents of the benefit for our region.”Milan Varga, Lead of Innovlab 

Many thanks go to:

The Judges:

Igor Stancik, Head of VP CLASSIC IT Slovakia, 

Martin Dzbor, Chief Strategy and Technology Offices, 

Peter Breyl, Innovation and R&D Manager at VSE, 

Emilia Pietrikova, Professors Assistant at Technical University of Kosice, 

Karol Kocur, Agile Coach at Scrum Desk.

To Organization Team: Mirek Binas, Assistant professor

Innovlab team (Milan Varga, Alica Narozna Gold, Andrea Lovacka, Lenka Adamova)

To all participants of the Hackathons who showed an exemplary attitude and talents.

We are looking forward to the final prototypes that will see the light of the world.

Media contact: Lenka Adamova.

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