Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists Alexandre Sorokine, top left, and Mark Coletti, top right, participated in the second annual Knoxville City Hackathon, which challenges coders to build solutions for civic problems. ORNL helped sponsor the event.
Photo: Jared Smith
A team that included Oak Ridge National Laboratory computer scientists made it to the final round of the second annual Knoxville City Hackathon, as more than 50 participants tackled data challenges in pursuit of a better city.
The 28-hour competition spanned the weekend of July 18-19 and put 16 coding teams to work brainstorming and building digital solutions to civic problems, based on open-source data provided by the city of Knoxville. This year marked ORNL’s first time as a sponsor.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s event took place virtually, with coders participating from as far away as Nashville and Atlanta.
“We still had people working online at 1 a.m.,” said Jared Smith, lead scientist for artificial intelligence for cybersecurity in ORNL’s National Security Sciences Directorate and a co-organizer of the event. “It’s really exciting to see so many people willing to go beyond their 9-5 jobs and use their scientific skills to help advance the science of cybersecurity and make a difference in their community.”
Finalists included ORNL researchers Mark Coletti and Alexandre Sorokine, whose team won a data challenge prize for tracking scooter traffic around the city and developing heat maps illustrating the busiest times and places for scooter users. Their entry, along with the others, will be presented to city officials for consideration.
Smith said he hopes to see the event become an annual recruiting opportunity for ORNL as the Lab expands its cybersecurity, data science and analytics portfolio.
Additional sponsors included KnoxDevs and the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center. For a full list of finalists, visit knxhx2020.devpost.com.
~ Matt Lakin