NASA Space Apps Challenge 2019 kicked off in the city on Saturday aiming to open data to address real-world problems on Earth and in space.
BASIS along with BASIS Student's Forum has organised consecutively for the 5th time NASA Space Apps Challenge 2019. The partner of NASA Space Apps Challenge 2019-Bangladesh is Skill Development for Mobile Game & Application Project under ICT Division and Institution of Diploma Engineers, Bangladesh (IDEB).
The gold sponsor of this event is Evaly and internet partner is Aamra Networks Limited.
This year more than 4,000 participants have submitted their projects. Out of them, top 45 teams have been selected for the Hack-a-Thon. Top 40 teams will fight in 36 hours long Hack-a-Thon on Saturday and Sunday.
NASA has organised this event in 273 cities this year globally. From Bangladesh, nine cities -Dhaka, Sylhet, Chittagong, Barisal, Rangpur, Mymensingh, Khulna, Barisal and Comilla- have participated in the global Hack-a-Thon.
This year's campaign involved approximately 10 million students virtually and approximately 2,00,000 students took part physically in this event.
Today at the opening ceremony, NASA Space Apps Challenge Convener Didarul Alam were present.
Also, NASA Space Apps Challenge 2019's Adviser Mohammad Mahdee-uz-Zaman and Bangladesh-IDEB's General Secretary (CEC) Md Shamsur Rahman were present.
Convener of NASA Space Apps Challenge Didarul Alam said, "Last year, we received more than 2000 projects from six cluster categories."
Among them, 40 teams were invited to participate at 48 hours global Hack-a-Thon. It's been great honor for us that, "Team Olik" from Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Bangladesh became the world champion in the Best Use of Data category, he said. This time, Team Olik has been invited again at NASA Global Champion's Ceremony.
"Also, this year we have sorted top 45 projects out of 4,000. We are hopeful to do better this time," Alam said.
Adviser of NASA Space Apps Challenge Mohammad Mahdee-uz-Zaman said, this year NASA has announced 5 challenge categories comprising 21 sub-categories.
"Besides, our young and talented scientists will work on categories like weather, moon, planets near and far and many more," he added.
"Bangladesh has made constant progress over the past five years, and we are hopeful that the country's flag will be hoisted much higher this year," he hoped.
After 36 hours long Hack-a-Thon, on Sunday at 7:30 pm the prize giving ceremony will take place at Muktijoddha Hall, IDEB, Kakrail in the capital.
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