Networking app for skilled refugees wins NYUAD International Hackathon

ABU DHABI, 19th April, 2017 (WAM) -- Hiat, an application designed to connect skilled refugees and the local community in an easy-to-use "gig economy" platform has won top honours at NYU Abu Dhabi’s 7th Annual International Hackathon for Social Good in the Arab World.

The application was designed by a team of six students who were mentored by Islam El Ashi, a software engineer at Twitter. Camilo Luciano from Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, Amr Aljundi from the American University of Sharjah, Vladimir Ilievski from Ecole Polutechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, Sonia Xu, Hacking Medicine, MIT, USA, Radwa Hamed from the American University in Cairo and Munira Alali from Khalifa University, UAE, worked together over three days to design Hiat.

Aspiring hackers from across the globe came together at NYUAD from 14th April for the three-day event. Participants were divided into 10 teams and mentored by renowned international computer science professors, founders of successful startups, technology professionals, and venture capitalists.

The event is organised by Sana Odeh, Founder and Chair for NYUAD Hackathon, Clinical Professor of Computer Science at NYU New York and Affiliated Faculty at NYUAD. Speaking about the scope of the hackathon in its 7th edition and the innovations that were proposed during the three days, she said, "This edition of the Hackathon has thrown up some wonderfully innovative solutions and powerful ideas and this made the judges’ jobs particularly difficult. The calibre of the participants was remarkably impressive and what they were able to achieve in three days would normally take months to put together.

"The purpose behind the NYUAD Hackathon is to stimulate and enable an environment conducive for innovation, collaboration and entrepreneurship in computer science. By bringing together people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, we have sought to broaden the scope of understanding of the participants, something that is crucial for innovation to flourish," she added.