Time management tool for students wins top prize at Carnegie Mellon Hackathon

CMU-Q Hackathon competition, with support from tech industry leader Siemens, delivers a weekend of high-tech creativity and innovation

DOHA, QATAR–  The top prize for Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar’s Hackathon 2019 competition went to a time management tool for students. The app, which was developed by CMU-Q students Sideeg Hassan, Ammar Karkour, Abdullah Shaar and Shaden Shaar, uses a smart sorting algorithm that manages and sorts tasks for busy students, and uses advanced machine learning to find and retrieve answers to questions using speech recognition.

At the seventh edition of the student-led competition, 11 teams of young innovators participated in the round-the-clock race to create an app. Student competitors represented CMU-Q and Carnegie Mellon’s main campus in Pittsburgh, as well as Northumbria University in Qatar, Northwestern University in Qatar,Qatar University and Weill Cornell Medicine—Qatar. This year’s competition also included a student from DPS Modern Indian School, the first time a high school student has participated.

“The Hackathon format is intensive, with a tight timeline and high levels of competition,” said Dan Phelps, associate teaching professor of information systems and the faculty advisor for the event. “This is excellent experience for students who are interested in high tech because they learn to harness their creative energy, collaborate in teams and produce an app in a time-pressured environment.”

This year’s Hackathon was sponsored by Siemens in Qatar, who provided judges and mentors for the competition and presented prizes to the four winning teams. As one of the world’s largest technology companies, Siemens has applied for more patents in 2018 than any other company in Europe, as reported by the European Patent Office. The Hackathon was an opportunity to engage with Qatar’s emerging developers.

Adrian Wood, the company’s CEO in Qatar and one of the Hackathon judges, was impressed with the efforts of the young techs. “Knowing the potential that a hackathon can bring to the tech industry sets the bar very high for participants, and we can expect to hear about the next big app from an event like this,” he said.

“At Siemens, research and development plays a very important role in our operations. We hold our own annual hackathon because we recognize the innovation that can come out of this kind of competitive, collaborative environment.” Siemens registered 7,300 inventions worldwide in 2018, averaging 33 inventions per day. More than 25 percent of Siemens’ patent applications are in the area of digitalization.

After spending 24 hours developing an app, each team had six minutes the project to the panel of judges. The panel included Adrian Wood, Claudio Ranaudo and Anirban Pal of Siemens, Houda Bouamor of CMU-Q; and Shah Kamaly of Ooredoo.

In addition to the Best Overall App, teams were recognized in three other categories. The Best Technical App category went to Mohammed Siddiqui from Carnegie Mellon’s main campus, Faiq Defiandry and Akhyar Kamili of CMU-Q, and Mohamed Ashraf from Qatar University. The Best Design award went to CMU-Q students Amer Ahmad, Sameer Ahmad, Mohamed Hamdi and Ishaq Hasan. The Rookie Award went to Achira Bhattacharyya, Northwestern University in Qatar, Shreyensh Soni, Northumbria University in Qatar, and Nafeel Ahmad of DPS Modern Indian School.

Speaking after the awards, Houda Bouamor, assistant professor of information systems and a judge at the event, praised the teams for their efforts: “The successes of each individual who took part in this Hackathon came from being creative, being innovative, and pushing the limits of what they know. Those are exactly the values that CMU-Q represents.”

For more information on programs offered at Carnegie Mellon Qatar, please visit: https://www.qatar.cmu.edu/academics