MMY students win Cisco create 24 hour IOE Hackathon at The Landing

Cisco CREATE, Cisco’s IoE Innovation Centre in Hackney, in partnership with The Landing, hosted their first regional IoE Challenge Thursday 5th – Friday 6thMarch. The event attracted over 50 participants, with a team from Manchester Metropolitan University being crowned the ultimate winners with their innovative solution to a Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) problem statement.

The event drew participants from nine leading UK universities, including Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield and Manchester Metropolitan (MMU) and ran from 9am on Thursday until 9am on Friday.

In total nearly 50 students took part, from a range of academic and vocational disciplines including Engineering, Advanced Mathematics, Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science. Students were encouraged to envisage solutions that combine data, people, things and processes in the spirit of Cisco’s Internet of Everything concept.

The 24 hour hackathon itself was an intense round-the-clock process, with sleeping bags and beanbags being brought in especially for the occasion to allow for overnight working and ‘crash time’.

Transport for Greater Manchester contributed one of the three real life challenges the students were invited to solve, with two other challenges focusing on High Street Regeneration and efficient management of large-scale offices.

Through much deliberation, the jury ultimately crowned MMU with the title. Their effort involved building a solution in both hardware and software to support a traffic light system to mitigate passenger footfall density within a public train station setting.

Jon Corner, CEO of The Landing, said “Many experts believe that what is vital to the UK’s economic, cultural and social growth is more and better collaboration, integration and communication between higher education, business and government.

“Therefore it’s fantastic that The Landing was able to partner with Cisco CREATE to facilitate an event like this where higher education meets real-world issues and challenges. The Internet of Everything is no longer just an abstract idea, it’s a real and tangible approach to smarter thinking and problem solving.”

Stu Higgins, Strategic Lead Cisco IMPACT commented: “The results were astounding. All nine teams managed to create prototypes within the 24 hours – the winning team from Manchester Met University even managed to create a hardware prototype from a Raspberry Pi and some movement sensors to go with a website and a smartphone app! I was amazed how much all of the teams managed to achieve in such a short amount of time, and I had forgotten how little sleep students need!”

The following Universities participated: Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores, Sheffield, Plymouth, Birmingham City, Manchester Metropolitan, Leeds, Bradford.