The forty eight hours long “NASA Space Apps Challenge” has successfully finished at Independent University, Bangladesh. The event started from April 10th and ended on April 11th, 2015; simultaneously all over the world.
Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) was the local organizer for the event in Bangladesh. Independent University, Bangladesh played the host for Dhaka.
Total 36 teams participated in the event and stayed for 48 hours at IUB to develop their ideas into reality. Different Universities and companies across the country took part. There were teams from institutions like BUET, DU, Brac University, East West University, IUB to name a few.
Judge panel for the competition consisted of professors of different universities and experts from different leading software and IT companies around Bangladesh. One representative from NASA was also there for the whole Hackathon.
IUB_Quarks, one of the three teams that took part from IUB won the top prize in this Hackathon for their innovative crowd sourced app in identifying the clean water sources in a community. The team consisted of the following members: Sayem Chahlader, Junaed Aalam, Monirul Isalm and Fahim Zaman, all four are from dept. of CSE. They received the award from Nazrul Islam Khan, Secretary, Ministry of Education, who was the chief guest for the award giving ceremony. Mr. Rashed Chowdhury, Chairman, Board of Trustees, IUB was also present at the ceremony.
The International Space Apps Challenge is a two-day Hackathon where teams of technologists, scientists, designers, artists, educators, entrepreneurs, developers and students across the globe collaborate and engage with publicly available data to design innovative solutions for global challenges.
NASA with an intention to make the Space Apps Challenge valuable to and accessible to the international community arranged the competition globally which lead to an international mass collaboration focused on space exploration that takes place over 48-hours in cities around the world. The event embraced collaborative problem solving with a goal of producing relevant open-source solutions to address global needs applicable to both life on Earth and life in space. This year, over 25 challenges in four areas have been selected. These were Earth, Outer Space, Humans and Robotics. NASA was assisted by a number of government collaborators and over 100 local organizing teams across the globe.
The Challenge exemplifies the principles of transparency, participation and collaboration by utilizing openly available data, supplied through NASA missions and technology, and the talent and skill of passionate volunteers from around the planet to advance space exploration and improve the quality of life on Earth.
The top four teams from Bangladesh are now eligible to compete for the final round to be held in NY.
http://techshohor.com/news/35166 
http://bit.ly/1Daq0fa
http://studentbd24.com/?p=29638
http://bangla.bdnews24.com/tech/article953759.bdnews
http://epaper.thedailystar.net/index.php?opt=view&page=4&date=2015-04-14
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