Six students and two mentors from Universiti Teknologi Brunei (UTB) represented the country at the ASEAN-India Hackathon 2021. It was conducted virtually starting 1 to 3 February 2021.
This programme is an initiative by the Ministry of Education, India on the clarion call of Honourable Prime Minister of India, Mr. Shri Narendra Modi which offers unique opportunities for all 10 ASEAN countries and India to forward their economic and cultural ties through collaboration in education, science and technology. The Honourable Prime Minister highlighted two broad themes of Blue Economy and Education in solving ASEAN countries’ common identified challenges.
With 90 mentors and 330 students, a total of 55 teams were created to address 11 problem statements under the theme Blue Economy where each team comprises of 6 student members and 2 mentors from the ASEAN member states and India.
The Award Ceremony was held yesterday, 4 February 2021, where two teams – Team 19 and Team 40, with Brunei representatives in the teams made the country proud by winning the Runner-ups.
Present virtually at the Award Ceremony, was Yang Berhormat Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Hamzah bin Haji Sulaiman, Minister of Education.
Also present at the virtual event was Yang Mulia Professor Dr Dayang Hajah Zohrah binti Haji Sulaiman, Vice-Chancellor of UTB.
Team 19, with Enhancing Coastal Security problem as their problem statement had Dr. Wida Susanty binti Haji Suhaili from the School of Computing and Informatics, UTB as their mentor. The team managed to come up with a solution by developing a prototype device that can act as a “black box” device for any vessels and can be monitored via dashboard through multiple communication technologies to ensure no communication loss.
Dr. Wida stated that mentoring a group of students with diverse backgrounds with an unfamiliar problem to solve was a challenging task. Different time zone with online mode of deliveries, adds to the uniqueness of the event. Fortunately, multiple training sessions were organised to aid in the knowledge gathering done by the Ministry of Education Innovation Cell (MIC). The MIC facilitated a strong coordination mechanism between participating students working on the problems and the problem statement creators.
Meanwhile Team 40, led by Dayang Siti Aisah binti Janaji, a PhD student from UTB School of Business won the second place by solving a problem statement on Traffic Management System in coastal regions.
According to Siti Aisah, leading a team virtually in a prestigious hackathon at the regional level is such a tremendous opportunity. Her team were expected to solve problems in the least cumulative time. She added that feedback and technical support from judges and the committee respectively have contributed to a strong finish whereby her team came up with a quantifiable outcome, a mobile application prototype.
Participating teams were designated with varied skilled individuals to collaborate on complex and real-world problems working under an intensive 36-hour deadline. Prior to the inauguration day of ASEAN India Hackathon, all participating teams had undergone briefing and training conducted by technical and domain experts.
Team 40, led by PhD student from UTB
