Taipei Team Wins First Place in the World’s Largest Hackathon

PR-1718E | Date: 06/16/2017

The American Institute in Taiwan is proud to announce that the Taiwan team, Space Bar, won first place in the global competition for “Best Mission Concept” in the 2017 NASA International Space Apps Challenge Hackathon, the world’s largest hackathon.  Space Bar competed against 25,140 participants who designed 2,017 projects in 187 locations around the world to win this global title.

Space Bar’s winning app is an easy-to-use tool to allow the public to obtain and understand landslide data by using NASA’s open data, and to contribute their own observations for use by emergency managers.  The members of Space Bar team are Yuan-Yao Sung, Hong-Ren Mao, Kai-Feng Chen, Yu-Chen Su, and Chia-Hsuan Lu.

The 2017 NASA International Space Apps Challenge was held around the world from April 29 to 30.  Projects which won first place, second place, and the People’s Choice Award from each location were submitted to compete for global awards. After the first round of competition, the top 25 projects were selected to compete in the final round for awards in the following five categories (each category had five finalists):

• Best Use of Data:  The solution that best makes space data accessible, or leverages it to a unique application.
• Best Use of Hardware:  The solution that exemplifies the most innovative use of hardware.
• Best Mission Concept:  The solution with the most plausible solution concept and design.
• Galactic Impact:  The solution with the most potential to improve life on Earth or in the Universe.
• Most Inspirational:  The solution that captures our hearts.

Magic Conch, Taipei’s second place award winner, was one of the five finalists in the “Best Use of Data” Category. 

CCIT-crazy Top, Taipei’s People’s Choice Award, competed for the global People’s Choice Award vote, which was decided based on global online voting.  CCIT-crazy Top was ranked one of the top 20 global People’s Choice teams, among 2,017 teams.

AIT partnered with the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Department of Information Technology of the Taipei City Government, and the National Taiwan University to host the 2017 NASA Space Apps Challenge Hackathon in Taipei.  Other local partners involved in Taipei’s 2017 NASA Space Apps Challenge Hackathon include Amazon Web Services, Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research of National Central University, Chunghwa Telecom, Discovery Channel Asia, Foundation for Women’s Rights Promotion and Development, Huashan 1914 Creative Park, IBM Taiwan, Intel, IntelliCentrics, Microsoft Taiwan, National Space Organization, PIXNET, Scientific American (Taiwan), the American Innovation Center, Proty Wu Team, and the Taiwan Design Center. 

To learn more about Space Bar’s winning project, please visit: 
https://2017.spaceappschallenge.org/challenges/warning-danger-ahead/when-landslides-strike/teams/space-bar/project  

To learn more about Taiwan’s 2017 NASA Space Apps Challenge visit: http://ait.org.tw/en/pressrelease-pr1709.html