San Diego State University: Big Data Hackathon Seeks Teams to Solve Real-World Challenges in Health Care
At the Oct. 8 and Oct. 15 Big Data Hackathon student teams will create innovative ideas, solutions, and apps for tackling real-world challenges in health care and health disparities. The event seeks domain knowledge experts, creative thinkers, business analysts, programmers, graphic designers, journalists and mapmakers to create solutions to important problems.
Participants can use their skills in journalism, business, marketing, data, public health, urban planning, programming, mapping, GIS and more — to help make San Diego a better place to live.
This event is open to students from all disciplines — the emphasis is on design and creativity which means all skills will be critical to a hackathon team’s work. Students may enter with a team or alone for Hackathon organizers to coordinate a team. Training for participants seeking data analytics skills will be provided.
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Amy Schmitz Weiss, professor of journalism and SDSU Big Data Hackathon judge, offered additional details on the event:
What is a Hackathon?
It’s a collaborative event that brings together people from different disciplines and backgrounds to come up with ideas to help solve a problem in a community. Hackathons usually have a theme and teams are formed to help come up with the idea and create a general wireframe, sample design, etc. Teams pitch their ideas to a panel of judges and there are usually prizes given to the best teams to help their idea move forward.
Why should someone join?
No technical knowledge or expertise is needed.
Students learn creative thinking, problem solving and collaborative/team building skills. They learn how to work with people of different backgrounds and disciplines while finding a potential solution to a problem. They also gain new knowledge and information about the Hackathon theme — health care in this digital age.
It’s a great opportunity to make a difference in San Diego.
What are the criteria for awards?
This year we are seeking teams to create solutions for San Diegans tied to the theme of health care. A panel of judges will assess each team’s ides pitch presentation based on:
Quality
Innovativeness/creativity
Readiness to go to market
Impact on health care
Demonstration of teamwork/collaboration
Development and design (can include code but not required)
What are the prizes?
There are more than $13,000 in prizes related to the judging criteria. We also have special awards for ideas that are connected to Women in STEM and awards for high school student teams.
First prize is $3,000; Second prize, $2,000; 3rd prize, $1,500; 4th prize, $900. Other prize categories include: Most innovative proposal ($500); Strongest teamwork ($500); Imperial Valley student participation ($500). Other awards include the Geocomputational Thinker Awards (sponsored by National Science Foundation) and ZIP Launchpad awards.
Who are the judges?
SDSU faculty, health experts, entrepreneurial business leaders, and data experts. We also have mentors who will be on hand during the event to guide the teams.