INTI students win Code-a-Thon

is what leads to victory.

Besides creating an app, the students were also required to pitch the idea behind the app, present their case study, and create a viable business plan to market and commercialise the app.

The regional event was held for secondary schools, colleges and universities students, as well as experienced coders from across Asean.

Code-a-Thon provided a platform for students, amateur and experienced coders, designers and business folk alike to come together to develop app prototypes. INTI Computer Science and Computing degree programmes head Dr Lim Chia Yean, who guided the students said they began their journey at the regional level last year, competing against participants in Penang.

The theme for last year’s edition was “Technopreneurship for Gender Equality in 2017”.

Having emerged as champions at the regional competition, they went on to participate in the finals and won the “Most Socially Impactful” Award under the University category with a cash prize of SGD500 (RM1,478).

Lim said: “We are proud of our students. They have demonstrated the skills and capabilities young people have in addressing social issues through the use of technology. To have them win at this global level is nothing short of amazing. More importantly, these students gained an invaluable experience in learning to work together and to put into practise what they have learned in their classrooms. This opportunity to connect theory to real life challenges provided them with insights into the expectations of the workplace.”

The winning team attended the Code-aThon closing summit and prize-giving ceremony at Google’s Asia Pacific Headquarters in Singapore, where they also got the chance to join the Google Makerspace workshop and to work on the Google AIY project, a doit-yourself artificial intelligence project for app-makers.