Educational platform gave ITM researchers a win in international hackathon
Researchers and alumni from ITM have won a hackathon for sustainable development. Their winning proposal is a digital platform that increases the opportunities for students from areas without high-quality education to study at universities around the world. The idea was presented at the World's Fair in Dubai in December.
More than 1300 teams from around the world worked for two weeks on global sustainability challenges based on Agenda 2030 in Hack for Earth 2021. Seven teams were selected by the jury and given the opportunity to further develop their ideas. One of them consists of, among others, ITM researchers Susanne Nilsson and Margareta Norell Bergendahl.
”We won the Education category with an idea for a digital platform that will support students from countries and areas that do not have access to high-quality education, and give them the opportunity to study at universities around the world”, says Susanne Nilsson, researcher in Integrated Product Development and Design.
Susanne Nilsson explains that the goal of the platform is to enable talented and study-motivated young people who can contribute to solutions for major societal challenges in the future.
”Today, many potential students are screened out when they come from schools or universities from which the more established universities do not have the resources and competence to assess quality and grades. On the platform, these students receive support, among other things, to translate their grades, as well as the opportunity to carry out tests to validate their real competence linked to engineering subjects and sustainability.”
The next step in the project starts this spring, and the team will be part of the accelerator program Build for Earth where they get support to develop their idea.
”In the program, we are offered, among other things, a fantastic network of experts in various areas from around the world”, says Susanne Nilsson. ”During the spring, we also hope to find people at KTH who are interested in participating in and supporting the project to develop a first prototype.”
The team has participants from Sweden, Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana, and is between ages 16–70.
Read more about the project: hackforearth.com/winners
Text: Alexandra von Kern