By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 2 Aug: On the second day of the Hackathon Grand Finale, 210 selected students of the country engaged in exploring solutions for the challenges related to agriculture, tourism and disaster management in the state of Uttarakhand by joining Graphic Era through the virtual medium. These 35 teams of students have to find solutions to these challenges digitally by 9 a.m. on Monday. Ten experts, connected online with Graphic Era from Uttarakhand and other parts of the country, are monitoring the work done by these teams of students. The Union Government will help them take the solution to its logical conclusion.
The Smart India Hackathon Grand Finale is being organised in a virtual manner this year due to the Covid pandemic. The Union HRD Ministry has selected Graphic Era University as the nodal centre for the Hackathon for the second consecutive time. Each participating team consists of 6 students and 2 mentors. As many as 35 teams are connected through the virtual medium with Graphic Era and are working on 7 problem statements with the Uttarakhand Agriculture, Tourism, Disaster Management, Transport and Health Sectors.
AICTE has been organising the Smart India Hackathon every year since 2017.
At the inaugural function of the Smart India Grand Finale, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the students through video conferencing with Graphic Era University and other nodal centres. The Prime Minister reviewed the projects of the participating teams. He advised students to never give up on asking questions and finding solutions to the problems.
The Hackathon was inaugurated by HRD Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’. He said that, this year, more than 5 lakh students across the country participated in the Smart India Hackathon, out of which 10,000 students were selected for the Grand Finale.
This year, students participating in Smart India’s Hackathon grand finale are working on more than 150 problem statements across the country. The teams of students have been given 36 hours to find solutions to these challenges. The winning team will get Rs 1 lakh in cash from the Union government.
Prof Kamal Ghanshala, Chairman of Graphic Era Education Group, said that the Grand Finale of the Hackathon is an innovative experiment in finding solutions with the help of information technology for various government departments and challenging problems of the country.
Graphic Era University’s Hackathon point of contact is Vice Chancellor Prof HN Nagaraja, while Dr Pradeep Joshi and Dr Sachin Sharma are the coordinators.