“No money prizes. However our buddies in Kiev are calling in, they usually’ll most likely say thanks,” was the the tagline that drew college students and tech professionals to hitch MIT-Ukraine’s first-ever hackathon this previous January.
The hackathon was co-sponsored by MIT-Ukraine and Mission Innovation X and was formed by the efforts of MIT alumni from the world over. It was led by Hosea Siu ’14, SM ’15, PhD ’18, a seasoned hackathon organizer and AI researcher, in collaboration with Phil Tinn MCP ’16, a analysis engineer now primarily based at SINTEF [Foundation for Industrial and Technical Research] in Norway. This system was designed to prioritize tangible influence:
“In a typical hackathon, you would possibly get a weekend of sleepless nights and a few flashy however largely ineffective prototypes. Right here, we stretched it out over 4 weeks, and we’re anticipating actual, significant outcomes,” says Siu, the hackathon director.
One week of coaching, three weeks of challenge improvement
Within the first week, individuals attended lectures with main consultants on key challenges Ukraine at present faces, from a chat on mine contamination with Andrew Heafitz PhD ’05 to a briefing on disinformation with Nina Lutz SM ’21. Then, individuals fashioned groups to develop tasks addressing these challenges, with mentorship from prime MIT specialists together with Phil Tinn (AI & protection), Svetlana Boriskina (power resilience), and Gene Keselman (protection innovation and dual-use expertise).
“I actually preferred the stable construction they gave us — strolling us by precisely what’s occurring in Ukraine, and potential options,” says Timur Grey, a first-year in engineering at Olin School.
The 5 ultimate tasks spanned demining, drone expertise, AI and disinformation, schooling for Ukraine, and power resilience.
Supporting demining efforts
With present ranges of expertise, it’s estimated that it’s going to take 757 years to totally de-mine Ukraine. College students Timur Grey and Misha Donchenko, who’s a sophomore arithmetic main at MIT, got here collectively to analysis the newest developments in demining expertise and strategize how college students might most successfully assist improvements.
The crew has made connections with the Ukrainian Affiliation of Humanitarian Demining and the HALO Belief to discover alternatives for MIT college students to immediately assist demining efforts in Ukraine. In addition they explored challenge concepts to work on instruments for civilians to report on mine areas, and the crew created a demo internet web page рішучість757, which incorporates an interactive database mapping mine areas.
“Having the ability to apply my abilities to one thing that has a real-world influence — that’s been one of the best a part of this hackathon,” says Donchenko.
Innovating drone manufacturing
Drone expertise has been certainly one of Ukraine’s most important benefits on the battlefield — however authorities paperwork threatens to sluggish innovation, in keeping with Oleh Deineka, who made this problem the main focus of his hackathon challenge.
Becoming a member of remotely from Ukraine, the place he research post-war restoration on the Kyiv Faculty of Economics, Deineka introduced invaluable firsthand perception from dwelling and dealing on the bottom, enriching the expertise for all individuals. Previous to the hackathon, he had already begun growing UxS.AGENCY, a safe digital platform to attach drone builders with unbiased funders, with the goal of guaranteeing that the pace of improvements in drone expertise isn’t curbed.
He notes that Ukrainian arms producers have the capability to provide thrice extra weapons and navy gear than the Ukrainian authorities can afford to buy. Selling personal sector improvement of drone manufacturing might assist resolve this. The platform Deineka is engaged on additionally goals to scale back the danger of corruption, permitting builders to work immediately with funders, bypassing any bureaucratic interference.
Deineka can also be working with MIT’s Keselman, who gave a chat throughout the hackathon on dual-use expertise — the concept navy improvements also needs to have civilian purposes. Deineka emphasised that growing such dual-use expertise in Ukraine might assist not solely to win the struggle, but additionally to create sustainable civilian purposes, guaranteeing that Ukraine’s 10,000 educated drone operators have jobs after it ends. He pointed to future purposes similar to drone-based city infrastructure monitoring, precision agriculture, and even private safety — like a small drone following a baby with bronchial asthma, permitting mother and father to observe their well-being in actual time.
“This hackathon has related me with MIT’s prime minds in innovation and safety. Being invited to collaborate with Gene Keselman and others has been an unbelievable alternative,” says Deineka.
Disinformation dynamics on Wikipedia
Wikipedia has lengthy been a battleground for Russian disinformation, from the profiling of artists like Kazimir Malevich to the framing of historic occasions. The hackathon’s disinformation crew labored collectively on a machine learning-based software to detect biased edits.
They discovered that Wikipedia’s moderation system is inclined to reinforcing systemic bias, significantly in terms of historical past. Their challenge laid the groundwork for a possible student-led initiative to trace disinformation, suggest corrections, and develop instruments to enhance fact-checking on Wikipedia.
Schooling for Ukraine’s future
Russia’s struggle towards Ukraine is having a detrimental influence on schooling, with fixed air raid sirens disrupting lessons, and over 2,000 Ukrainian faculties broken or destroyed. The STEM schooling crew centered on what they might do to assist Ukrainian college students. They developed a plan for adapting MIT’s Beaver Works Summer season Institute in STEM for college kids nonetheless dwelling in Ukraine, or probably for Ukrainians at present displaced to neighboring nations.
“I didn’t understand what number of faculties had been destroyed and the way deeply that might influence youngsters’ futures. You hear concerning the struggle, however the hackathon made it actual in a means I hadn’t thought of earlier than,” says Catherine Tang, a senior in electrical engineering and laptop science.
Vlad Duda, founding father of Nomad AI, additionally contributed to the schooling observe of the hackathon with a deal with language accessibility and studying assist. One of many prototypes he introduced, MOVA, is a Chrome extension that makes use of AI to translate on-line assets into Ukrainian — an particularly priceless software for highschool college students in Ukraine, who usually lack the English proficiency wanted to interact with advanced educational content material. Duda additionally developed OpenBookLM, an AI-powered software that helps college students flip notes into audio and personalised examine guides, comparable in idea to Google’s NotebookLM however designed to be open-source and adaptable to completely different languages and academic contexts.
Power resilience
The power resilience crew labored on exploring cheaper, extra dependable heating and cooling applied sciences so Ukrainian houses will be much less depending on conventional power grids which are inclined to Russian assaults.
The crew examined polymer filaments that generate warmth when stretched and funky when launched, which might probably supply low-cost, sturdy house heating options in Ukraine. Their work centered on discovering the best braid construction to reinforce sturdiness and effectivity.
From hackathon to actuality
In contrast to most hackathons, the place tasks finish when the occasion does, MIT-Ukraine’s purpose is to make sure these concepts don’t cease right here. All of the tasks developed throughout the hackathon will likely be thought-about as potential avenues for MIT’s Undergraduate Analysis Alternatives Program (UROP) and MISTI Ukraine summer time internship packages. Final 12 months, 15 college students labored on UROP and MISTI tasks for Ukraine, contributing in areas similar to STEM schooling and reconstruction in Ukraine. With the various concepts generated throughout the hackathon, MIT-Ukraine is dedicated to increasing alternatives for student-led tasks and collaborations within the coming 12 months.
“The MIT-Ukraine program is about studying by doing, and making an influence past MIT’s campus. This hackathon proved that college students, researchers, and professionals can work collectively to develop options that matter — and Ukraine’s pressing challenges demand nothing much less,” says Elizabeth Wooden, Ford Worldwide Professor of Historical past at MIT and the school director of the MIT-Ukraine Program on the Heart for Worldwide Research.
