Offical Kickoff Friday April 16th @ 4:00pm CST: http://twitch.tv/hudsonalphatechchallenge

Presented by HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and Urban Engine

Official Website: https://hudsonalpha.org/techchallenge

Goal: Inspire creativity through collaboration, and energize the current and next generation of problem-solvers to conceive and construct innovative solutions to biotech challenges.

The Challenges: use an emerging technology such as machine learning, virtual/mixed reality, or blockchain technology and apply it to BioTech and Life Science.

Challenge 1: Woodland Champions 

Little did you know that Alabama has over 140 state champion trees on the books and is home to four national champions. Exploring these incredible examples of nature’s resilience is easy if all you want to do is see them. If you want to check them off your list of national treasures, you probably want a little more than a drive by sighting. The Woodland Champions challenge is all about creating a beautiful app that helps the casual dendrologist get more information on trees of interest across the nation.

Challenge 2: Signed, Sealed and Delivered 

Sonia has a document that needs to be reviewed, approved, and signed by multiple members of her organization. She needs a system that will route the document to each of them in turn and record their approval and signature. Once a recipient approves and digitally signs the document, the system then routes it to the next person on the list. When all recipients have approved and signed, a notification is sent back to Sonia letting her know the document has been approved by all recipients. In this challenge, you will create a certificate authority system by which documents can be secured, tracked, edited and signed all by multiple individuals.

Challenge 3: Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto 

Pouring through spreadsheets of data to pick out individuals that might be at risk of breast and ovarian cancer even without a known genetic risk factor sounds like something you might hire an intern to do. In fact, it requires some pretty specialized skills to determine what family history indicators might make someone more at risk than another. Genetic counselors are excellent at finding these, sometimes nuanced, indicators but are limited on time. This challenge requires the development of an AI that can not only find those individuals that may be at risk, but learn as it goes to build a more robust risk model based on both genetic and family history data.

Schedule

Friday, April 16

• 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. - Opening Ceremony/Intro to Challenges- Twitch Stream
• 5:30 p.m. - 6 p.m. - Team Matchmaking

Wednesday, April 21

• 5:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. - Challenge Check-in/Mid-week update

Sunday, April 25

• 5:00 p.m. - CODE FREEZE/Submissions Due
• 5:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. - Closing Ceremony - Twitch Stream

Sunday, April 25 - Sunday, May 2

• Judging

Sunday, May 2

• 5:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. - Winners Announced!

Workshop Schedule:

March 31st, 2021

April 7th, 2021

April 14th, 2021

• Impact
  How much impact (quality and quantity) can this solution have? Does this solution address the problem in a highly significant way?
• Creativity
  How creative is the team’s approach? Is the solution new? Does the solution represent something that isn’t being addressed by the market?
• Complexity
  How much progress did the team make during the event? Did they start from scratch or build on an existing solution?
• Product
  How user friendly is the technology? How fully formed/mature is the idea?
• Presentation
  Did the team effectively communicate their solution? Did they tell the story of the project and why it is important in a compelling way? How well did they respond to questions from judges?