This post is part of a series looking back on the events of the 2022 UTS Tech Festival. To see all the posts in the series, check the Tech Festival tag.
In this post, Jaime Garcia Marin tells us about the Student Hackathon that took place during the festival, and Avinash Singh discusses his workshop on standardised brain computer interface framework.
iOS Student Hackathon
For further information about this event, please contact Jaime Garcia Marin (Jaime.Garcia@uts.edu.au).
In one or two sentences, tell us about the event you ran during the Tech Festival?
The iOS Hackathon was a 2-day event for students to unlock their creativity as they created an iOS application from scratch in teams. No grades, no job expectations – just a chance to have fun, meet new people, and learn new skills.
This event was hosted by the FEIT Teaching & Learning Engagement team in collaboration with our incredible industry partners from Bilue and Commonwealth Bank, who mentored students through the two-day experience.
What inspired you to do this?
This event is aimed at exposing current iOS development students to the latest iOS development frameworks and connecting them with the creators of iOS apps we use in our everyday lives (such as the banking app from Commonwealth Bank).
It aimed to show students a potential career in the mobile app development sector, which is now more relevant than ever.
What was the most surprising outcome?
We were very pleased to see how socially responsible all the app solutions were. Also, the high level of sophistication considering that students had less than 48 hours to code their app prototypes.
How has it/will it benefit students?
This event was instrumental in connecting students with real-life iOS app developers to solve a relevant challenge: creating an iOS app that solves a problem faced by everyday Australians.
What’s the one piece of advice you would give other academics based on this experience?
Creating extra-curricular opportunities for students is essential. Traditional lectures and seminars do not always encourage students to exploit their creativity.
Any plans for what you’ll do next year?
We aim at running an event that involves more cross-faculty/multi-disciplinary student groups.
Further information
- Event page
- Hackathon winners
- Media Gallery Day 1 and Day 2
Workshop on standardised brain computer interface framework
For further information about this event, please contact Avinash Singh (Avinash.Singh@uts.edu.au).
In one or two sentences, tell us about the event you ran during the Tech Festival?
I ran a hands-on workshop on how to bridge the gap between neuroscience and computational intelligence to design and develop brain-computer interface (BCI). This workshop intends to promote standardisation of terminologies and technologies for brain-computer interfaces to computational intelligence practitioners and neuroscience communities. The workshop promotes the utilisation of open-source tools such as Google TensorFlow for enhancing community cohesion and BCI standardisation.
What inspired you to do this?
BCI represents a highly multidisciplinary research field consisting of neuroscientists, mathematicians, physicians, computer scientists, and engineers, to name a few. As a result, there are several versions of BCI experiments in terms of terminologies, file formats, and processing approaches which hinders understanding and evaluation of new approaches in BCI. This workshop was the first such step to bring together community promote BCI standardisation. This workshop was also part of Google Tensorflow Award 2021.
What was the most surprising outcome?
Surprisingly, there was quite an interest in the workshop. Despite the workshop being hands-on and in-person, there was significant demand to convert workshop in hybrid mode and several people joined it online from around the world in addition to people in UTS/Sydney.
How has it/will it benefit students?
The workshop aims to demonstrate how simple practice by researchers/students with the help of open-source tools such as Google TensorFlow can bring BCI standardisation to reality.
What’s the one piece of advice you would give other academics based on this experience?
Make sure to prepare a backup plan potentially due to variety of reasons such as last-minute no-show speakers, technical problems, etc.
Any plans for what you’ll do next year?
We plan to organise a bigger workshop next year.
Further information
Images provided by Jaime Garcia Marin and Avinash Singh.