From the Dublin docklands to the Global hackathon: NCI celebrates the Dublin NASA Space Apps Challenge Global Nominee

National College of Ireland’s campus has been buzzing with excitement over the amazing ideas that were put forward during the NASA Space Apps Challenge that the College hosted for the second time, acting as Dublin Mission Control.

Runtime Terror has just been announced as this year’s Dublin Mission Control NASA Space Apps Challenge Global Nominee. Already recognised by their peers with the Community Choice Award, this talented team created a visually appealing and accurately informative digital orrery to display near-Earth objects.

You Can View the Digital Orrery here.

This project was described by judges as a creative and inspiring submission that will spark curiosity in space exploration.

On Monday, November 4th, 2024, NCI welcomed the members of team Runtime Terror back to Mayor Square to present them with their award plaques and wish them well as the team moves forward to take part in the global phase of this cosmic hackathon.

“We are delighted to support NASA International Space Apps Challenge here at National College of Ireland, as their mission inspires collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking, which reflects our ethos. It always amazes us to see the participants’ enthusiasm and excitement that is part of this positive application of learning,” said Professor Paul Stynes, Dean of NCI’s School of Computing.

This year’s global theme, “The Sun Touches Everything,” invited participants to tackle one of 21 Challenges using space data and information. These challenges covered a wide range of topics, from astrobiology to space music, and the design of games for astronauts. “It was a brilliant two days. Everyone enjoyed themselves, and it was inspiring to see the creative energy fill the campus as everyone worked together to create and present their ideas,” said Dr Athanasios Staikopoulos, who acted as academic advisor to the event from NCI’s School of Computing.

Dublin Mission Control at NCI was host to many potential participants, with 9 teams completing projects to submission level, including les intouchables, Starchasers, Sunlit, the Celtic Community Cartographers, Cache Me If You Can, Data Wizz, and Unclebaofans. You can find more about all this year’s teams around the world, as well as those participating from Dublin Mission Control on the NASA Space Apps Challenge website.

The ingeniousness and quality level of the solutions proposed as well as the creativity and the broad range of media used made it very difficult for the Judging Panel to choose the Global Nominee that will progress to the final stages of the hackathon.

This year’s Global Nominee runner-up, Alpha Centauri is a multi-disciplinary team from Trinity College Dublin, who worked on a programme to analyse and clean real data from the Apollo missions and the Mars InSIght Lander to identify seismic quakes within the noise. Team members were Ruby Ge, Thomas Creagh, Sean Dignam, Ash Keena, and Angelos Eleftheriou!

Dublin’s NASA Space Apps Challenge Global Nominee, was team Runtime Terror. This team is made up of six talented members, Firose Shafin, Andrei-Alexandru Tabarna, Aditya Bhargav Akella, Pablo Periañez Cabrero, Maximilian Schöll, and Nithyakamal Ilamurugu. These innovative individuals came together as a team and created something that not only met the hackathon requirements but has the potential to expand. Team Runtime Terror should be immensely proud of their work.

Speaking on behalf of the group, Max Schöll said, “We met when we started at UCD together this September, but a two-day intensive hackathon really forms strong friendships! We had a moment where we thought we wouldn’t be able to complete the project, and then suddenly everything clicked – if nothing else, we have learned to keep going, keep trying, and you will get there!”

Aditya Bhargav Akella added, “We had so much fun and learned so much – the mentors who worked with us through the two days were incredible. The talks were inspiring, and it was really great to be able to chat directly with people who are working on space projects at such a high level.”

Nithyakamal Ilamurugu agreed, “Hakim Abid particularly gave us so much help. We also met other students from across Dublin who are interested in applying their knowledge in the area of space – it was a nice way to get to meet people who are as interested in space as we are.”

Looking at the haul of prizes from their loot bag, Andrei Tabarna said, “Our team founder, the reason we’re all here in the first place, Firose Shafin, can’t be at the awards event today, but we promise we’ll split the prize with him equally! This is such cool stuff.”

Pablo Periañez Cabrero concluded, “We are so grateful to Dublin Mission Control lead, Paola Vercesi, and to Dr Athanasios Staikopolous and all at the National College of Ireland who looked after us over the two-day hackathon.”

Paola Vercesi, Dublin Mission Control Lead responded by encouraging Runtime Terror to consider expanding their project and applying it to other challenges, “Your digital orrery is perfectly formed to become a map for identifying and plotting the pathways of space debris, something that is a hot topic at the moment, and of huge relevance not to just to ongoing space exploration and satellite communications, but to the Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG 12.”

This encouragement was echoed by one of Dublin Mission Control’s mentors, who also acted as a competition judge, Professor Nicholas Brereton, Ad Astra Fellow at UCD, who advised Runtime Terror to look at current ESA Academy opportunities.