AUK RISE Center launches NASA Space Apps Challenge

The Center for Research in Informatics, Sciences, and Engineering (RISE) at the American University of Kuwait (AUK) is proud to organize NASA’s International Space Apps Challenge, one of the largest hackathons on Earth, from the 18th to 20th of October, in Kuwait. RISE-AUK will collaborate with Kuwait Projects Company (KIPCO) as a strategic partner to host this event.

The hackathon will occur over 48 hours in 200 cities around the world. The Kuwait competition-which will take place at Marina Hotel, Salmiyawill bring together a variety of expertise ranging from scientists, coders, and space enthusiasts, to graphic designers and business analysts to develop useable solutions to address real-world challenges related to Earth and space. The top two winning projects from Kuwait will qualify to compete against the rest of the world’s winners in a second round of project assessment.

Dr. Amir Zeid, Director of RISEAUK, and Kuwait Country Lead of NASA Space Apps emphasized the importance of establishing links with international technology events of high relevance and benefit to the local community. “The idea of hackathons (programming marathons) is not new to Kuwait. It is increasingly becoming an effective developmental platform to generate young innovations and new business ideas of local and international significance.

In the previous years, RISE-AUK hosted international hackathons aiming to solve marine problems. This year, we are expanding to Earth, outer space and beyond. We hope to continue this tradition of contributing to the world through utilizing local innovative brains from among our AUK students and Kuwait’s youth at large. We treasure KIPCO’s strategic partnership on this year’s event, and we hope to continue working with them on more youth empowerment initiatives in the future,” said Dr Zeid.

On her part, the Director of Corporate Social Responsibility at KIPCO, Abeer Al-Omar shed light on KIPCO’s long-term community support strategies, of which youth empowerment gains prime importance as one of the main pillars of social development. Al-Omar expressed, “The Centre Center for Research in Informatics, Sciences, and Engineering at the American University of Kuwait has hosted numerous prestigious events and KIPCO is proud to be the strategic partner of the latest event hosted by them, NASA Space Apps Challenge. We are excited to see the solutions that the participants come up with as KIPCO has always been a strong supporter of empowering youth in their educational and developmental endeavors.”