ComBank sponsored ‘Hack:bit 2020’ a spectacular success

Six teams of students from local schools and universities have been recognised for demonstrating their coding skills by developing innovative and useful applications, and have won a fully- equipped IT Lab, laptops, electronic devices, microcontroller kits, and other equipment from the Commercial Bank of Ceylon.

The talent search was launched in the form of ‘ Hack: bit 2020,’ a virtual hackathon organised by the STEM Up Educational Foundation whose mission is to inspire and engage with students to interest them to pursue scientific, technological, engineering, and mathematical ( STEM) degrees and careers. The CSR Trust of the Commercial Bank of Ceylon was a sponsor of the event and extended its support to this exemplary tech competition to pave the way to build a collaborative platform for young Sri Lankans who are interested in innovation through technology, the bank said in a media release.

Commenting on the sponsorship, Commercial Bank Managing Director S. Renganathan said: “The CSR Trust of the Bank already invests 70 percent of its funds to promote education in Sri Lanka. In Hack: bit 2020, we saw another opportunity to be a part of encouraging young minds to pursue their passion for technology and create practical solutions to existing problems.”

The national level hackathon for school students and university undergraduates, Hack:bit 2020 invited participants to use programming tools and languages of their choice to develop innovative products of relevance to the real world. After receiving over 200 applications, a panel of judges assessed the initial participants based on criteria including uniqueness of the idea, innovativeness, implementation, business value, and sustainability of the developed product. The panel of judges comprised local technology and academic professionals with years of domain expertise between them.

Subsequently, 10 school teams and 10 university teams were shortlisted to participate in the semi-finals. At this stage, participants were provided with training, technical and non- technical knowledge sharing, and mentoring sessions headed by industry leaders. Lastly, five teams from each category were invited to submit their case online on the day of the final presentation.

Commercial Bank funded the organising of the competition and the exciting prizes that were presented to the first three winning teams of both the school and university categories. Team ‘ Tech Army’ from Central College, Kuliyapitiya; Team ‘ Crop Protector’ from President's College, Embilipitiya and Team ‘ Nixo’ from Ananda College, Colombo, were the first, second, and third prize winners in the Schools category.

Team ‘Tech Army’ won an IT Lab with 10 computers and furniture for its school and Arduino starter packs to encourage the coding and building of electronic systems, and external hard drives for each team member. The second placed winners also received Arduino starter packs as well as portable Wi-Fi routers while the third placed winners won BBC Micro: bit starter kits and computer mice.