Students of technical institutes across the country took part in a 48-hour online event organised by BIT-Sindri, titled Nav Ujjwal E-innovation Hackathon, which concluded on Thursday.

The event was organized by the institute’s student society, Model Club, and is the first of its kind in the district.

The students made presentations on how to utilize time efficiently during the pandemic to find economically viable and sustainable solutions to problems ranging from environmental degradation to manual scavenging, to food security and public health disaster management.

The BIT-Sindri Hackathon in progress in Dhanbad on Thursday Sourced by the Telegraph

The event was organised after drawing inspiration from the vision of the Atmanirbhar Bharat mission.

“The Hackathon was aimed at providing the youth of the nation an opportunity to use their problem-solving finesse and tackle some of the gnawing challenges being faced by mankind,” said Tridev Singh, a third year B.Tech Chemical Engineering student of the college.

Choudhary who is also chairperson of the Model Club, added that it was also is an attempt to bring about a surge of creativity and innovation which the country needs in this time of crisis.

Registration for the event began on July 15 on http://e-hackathon.modelclubbit.com/index.html.

As many as 150 teams registered for the event, and 40 teams were chosen after initial screening.

The event had two rounds, called the bridge round and revolution.

10 teams were selected during the revolution round.

They included Technovation of MAIT New Delhi, Team Omega of SRM University Tamil Nadu, E-Saathi of IIT Kharagpur, Aztecs of NIT Raipur, Ground Floor Developer of IIT Bhubaneshwar, Code Breaker of GIM Goa, Anti Dot of host BIT-Sindri, Freshmans of AIT Pune, Txselcr of IIT Roorkee and Third Eye of GNITS Hyderabad.

“They took part in the four-hour final round of the event held on Thursday, during which they explained their prototypes in the presence of a panel of judges explaining its efficacy, cost effectiveness as well as technological sustainability,” said Pravin Kumar Tripathi, a B.Tech 2nd year Mechanical Engineering student of the institute.

Tripathi is also the student coordinator of the event and public relations officer of the Model Club.

The results of the event are set to be announced on August 9 and prizes worth around Rs 1.5 lakh will be provided among the first three winners.

Earlier, the event was inaugurated August 4 by the institute’s director DK Singh alongside the professor in-charge of Model Club, professor RP Gupta.