Student Hackathon at Technion

Technion Hosts t-hack – Israel’s Largest Student Hackathon

The PneuMonitor team developed a system for monitoring life-threatening situations on the battlefield and won first place and a NIS 50,000 prize.

PneuMonitor is the team that won the NIS 50,000 first-place prize at t-hack – the largest student hackathon in Israel, which was held at Technion. The four group members: Noy Mark, Anat Lyubin Haimov, Rafi Gerasi, and Eran Sasha developed an innovative technology that detects a dangerous medical condition known as pneumothorax also known as a collapsed lung.

More than 600 students throughout the country and across 150 teams participated in t-hack, winning cumulative prizes totalling NIS 100,000. In the final stage of the hackathon, 10 groups with outstanding ideas presented their projects to a panel of judges which included, Prof. Adam Shwartz,  Technion’s Senior Executive Vice President; Dr. Irit Idan, Executive Vice President of Research and Development at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems; Dov Moran, a serial entrepreneur, investor and inventor of the disk-on-key; and Eden Shochat, a venture capitalist, equal partner at Aleph VC, and  co-founder of Face.com, a world leader in facial recognition for social networks.

T-hack, initiated by Technion’s Student Union (ASAT) and t-hub, Technion’s new Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center, focuses on three main areas:  autonomous systems, smart cities and accident and emergency medicine. Leading entrepreneurs from Israel’s industry and participating companies served as mentors for the students. The event was funded by Technion and supported by Intel, Facebook, Noble Energy and other technology companies.

At the opening of the event, Prof. Adam Shwartz, said that, “The event was born out of the understanding that entrepreneurship is a worldview and a way of life, and   Technion must provide entrepreneurial education to its students.” Prof. Schwartz is also the Chairman of t-hub, Technion’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center, which recently won a NIS 10 million grant from the Council for Higher Education. He added, “We are committed to providing all interested students with the tools to solve engineering, technological and scientific challenges during their professional careers, whether they work in academia, start-up companies, industrial, civilian or security companies, or in any other companies that benefit the public.”

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