The University of Florida and IBM held a multi-month nationwide hackathon to develop solutions to combat climate change. The hackathon issued challenges to the nation to work in multidisciplinary teams to compete in developing solutions to one of six climate change challenges. These challenges were “Climate Change & Florida Ecosystem,” “Improving the Condition of Florida’s Waterways,” “Sustainable Fisheries,” “Power Consumption,” “Animal Agriculture,” and “Wildcard.”
Two teams of Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies students advised by Dr. Michael Haungs and Dr. David Gillette entered the competition at the beginning of Fall quarter, 2021, and submitted their solutions to the “Sustainable Fisheries” and “Power Consumption” in November.
The “Sustainable Fisheries” team members were Brooke Anderson, Danielle Caparas, Jason Chu and Matthew Killbride. They won 1st place and $3000 in prize money for their cloud-based mobile application, Fish Grid, designed to incentivize sustainable fishing practices. The second team with team, consisting of JJ Alen, Joe Debruynkops and Corinna Donovan, designed a system to cool solar panels to increase energy output for the “Power Consumption” challenge. They received $200.
The hackathon included team members from 127 different institutions across the country. Additional information can be found here: https://floridahackswithibm.bemyapp.com/.
View their presentation slides below:
