The first edition of this hackathon was held on March 1st to 3rd at the DIFC Fintech Hive.

The Winners

  • 1st Place - Team ESAS

    Their winning project of using speech to text in AI to record lessons and using Generative AI to provide more information about the topic to the user, garnered praise for the innovative use of technology to aid education. They were awarded with a trophy from the National Program for Coders along with a cash reward of AED 2000 along with AED 2000 in Hale Education Rewards.

    Emre Ozer, Shady Abdallah, Ayan Shariff, and Sabeen Shariff

  • 2nd place - Team Machine Mindset

    Their creative solution used AI and Natural Language Processing to assist students in revising specific topics, by using natural language processing to parse through years of past papers and return relevant questions based on user prompt.

    Mohammad Allahham, Michael Chen, Johann Herbert, and Ronak Rajpurohit

  • 3rd Place - Team Cryptons

    Their creative project that utilised AI tools to identify and adapt learning material to suit student’s learning methods, so that all students can learn effectively.

    Aditi Anand and Pranjal Maghani

  • 4th Place - Team Back Prop Ninjas

    The innovative project by this team used sed ChatGPT and DALL.E. to come up with visual presentations on any given topic for students and teachers.

Key takeaways

  • Participation

    We had over 300 students sign up for the first edition of this hackathon forming over 100 teams. This culminated in the in person presentations where each team presented a unique solution to a panel of judges.

  • Diversity

    Among those participating we had participants almost 30 countries and 40 schools. We were particularly happy to see an almost 30% female participation rate and a healthy amount of female majority teams.

  • Amazing products

    Thanks to support from our sponsors, OpenAI as well as the amazing work by participants, we had a variety of amazing products submitted. From note-taking apps to fully functional wristbands we pushed the bounds of InnovAItion at this event.

Judges

  • Abdulwahed Juma

    CEO Commercial & Partnerships - Dubai Media Incorporated

    LinkedIn

  • Latifa Al Hammadi

    Academic Vice Principal at Al Selaa School - Platinum Coding Ambassador

    LinkedIn

  • Mark Wood

    Head of Computer Science - Dubai College

    LinkedIn

  • Arvind Krishnamurthy

    Head of Digital & Business Banking - Emirates NBD

    LinkedIn

  • Faisal Nawaz

    Senior Board Member and Group CEO of Atlantic Gulf & Pacific (AGP)

    LinkedIn

  • Vishal Jain

    Co Founder of Data Unabridged

    LinkedIn

  • Peter Larnholt

    Technology Leader

    LinkedIn

  • Steve Gotz

    Head of Corporate Innovation @ DIFC Innovation Hub

    LinkedIn