ResearchHub

Inspiration

During the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone is trying to mitigate its effects and are racing to find the effective vaccine. However, we identified some potential obstacles in this process:

Finding Volunteers

When developing a vaccine, it must be tested in advanced to verify its effectiveness. However, each institution/party involved in the vaccine development post their volunteer registrations on their respective websites. Furthermore, potential volunteers may have a hard time to register as there is no centralized platform. As a result, many decided not to volunteer due to the inconveniences of just trying to register as a vaccine volunteer. This might be time-wasting for the institution(s).

Collecting Funds

There are lots of fundraising attempts on the Internet relating to COVID-19, but they are mostly targeted towards community service (e.g. distributing groceries). When we tried to fundraise to help combat COVID-19, we struggled to find a user-friendly website that allows donors to directly donate to institutions trying to fight the pandemic (e.g. test kit manufacturers, vaccine developers). Even if they do, they expect each donor to donate large amounts of money, which can only be done by wealthy individuals or companies.

From these problems, the idea of ResearchHub was born.

What it does

ResearchHub allows researchers/institutions to post their cases. In their cases, researchers/institutions can either seek volunteers or fundraise. For users like us, users can either sign up for to volunteer for the case or donate a sum of money. The sum of money that each user can pay varies.

How we built it

We built the frontend by using HTML, CSS, and Javascript. We used Node.js for the backend, and we used MongoDB for the database.

Challenges we ran into

Some of us are new to several GitHub features (e.g. pull requests, forks).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built the prototype platform in less than 24 hours. We are also proud with the potentials ResearchHub have for the society.

What we learned

We learned more about collaborating via GitHub. We also learned more about ports, servers, and connecting our frontend to Node.js and MongoDB.

What's next for ResearchHub

We are planning to propose our project to researchers so that they will use our platform. To increase effectiveness, we are going to allow researchers/institutions to customize their fundraising/volunteer registration. We are also planning to add a feature where users can share their opinions.

Built With

Submitted to

Delhi Hacks

Created by

I was involved primarily in the platform's concepts, contents, and planning for the project's future. I also got to work on some of the UI/UX and frontend. I learned a lot, especially with GitHub's features. I also get to sharpen my management skills.

Manuel Stefan Christopher
It was my first Hackathon, and man it was lit.
I mostly worked on backend. Authentication, routes and payment system. And yeah, I wouldn't have done it without my team. So, a big thanks to everyone of 'em.

Rahil Rehan
So Yeahh...it was my first experience of hackathon and it was great mostly did Frontend part , got to learn a lot of things.

Samarth Asthana
It was my First Hackathon, i thoroughly enjoyed this phase, other than learning about technical stuff, i also came to learn about leadership and team management skills. We were able to submit our project successfully. Kudos to the team!

Ritika Jaiswal
Exploring and Learning new stuff!
Michael Winailan
EECS @ UC Berkeley