DOHA: Pupils from Qatar's leading educational institutions showcased innovative technologies at the second Hackathon competition held here by students from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.
The Carnegie Apps Hackathon, sponsored by Vodafone, brought together more than 40 students from CMQ, Qatar University, AlJazeera Academy, and Newton International School to build mobile applications and games within 24 hours that can make a difference in the way consumers use technology.
Carnegie Mellon alumni and representatives from industry giants including Vodafone, Microsoft and Williams F1 mentored the students.
A panel of judges from Microsoft and Vodafone selected the winning applications based on design, idea and creativity.
Vodafone Qatar Head of Innovation Khalifa Haroon, one of the judges, said, "Vodafone is pleased to support the Carnegie Mellon Hackathon, as we believe that we have a role to play in supporting the app developer community in Qatar, bringing technology in to meet local needs, and taking local innovation to the world."
This year's winning team for the best overall app, 'V-Hack', created 'Tweetmotions', an application that extracts emotions from live tweets, enabling the user to characterize emotions associated with certain terms, names and brands.
Freshman in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon and a V-Hack team member Hira Yasin Dhamyal, said, "We are thrilled to win. These kinds of events enforce and reignite our interest in coding. We cannot believe what we achieved in just 24 hours and are excited about perfecting the application that we have created. Hackathon definitely puts the fun back into coding."
The students also had the opportunity to better understand computer science through talks and interactive workshops on topics such as application design and entrepreneurship, which teach students how to think about solving computational problems and moving tech ideas from concept to reality. (QNA)
