UIUC collaborators and mentors meet with HackIllinois teams on US Ignite Challenge
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) was awarded a $20,000 grant from US Ignite to host a Smart Gigabit Communities Reverse Pitch Challenge. The MBDH, along with other local partners (see below), contributed towards matching the grant, bringing to $40,000 the total resources available to support the development of smart gigabit applications for the benefit of the local community.
US Ignite Reverse Pitch events encourage developers to partner with gigabit communities to create solutions to local problems or mine data in ways that enhance efficiency and save resources.
The UIUC Challenge kicked off on February 23-25, during Hackillinois, a student-driven hackathon hosted on the UIUC campus. The City of Champaign provided datasets and challenges for the student hackers to develop their ideas.
The two winning teams, “Gigabit Girls Wireless Underground Sensor Network” and “Geo Spatial Analysis of Open Municipal Data” have been rewarded with Amazon Fires and AWS Credits. Project teams will now work on the winning designs to develop gigabit software over the next six months.
The MBDH has been providing direct organizational resources, connecting partners to the project such as the National Data Service, and bringing mentors and judges to the Reverse Pitch event.
As a first involvement of this kind for the MBDH, it inaugurates perfectly the launching of a new MBDH focus on Smart, Connected, and Resilient Communities, and serves the Hub mission to bring communities together to address our society’s grand challenges.
Learn more about the collaborators and partners:
US Ignite
University of Illinois Technology Services
Center for Digital Inclusion at the School of Information Sciences
City of Champaign Information Technologies
HackIllinois
National Data Service
UC2B Community Benefit Group