On February 7 - 9, the fifth Latvian high-tech Deep Science Hackathon took place at the Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia (ISSP UL). This year the participants were students and professionals from various Latvia’s universities and companies representing such countries as India, Denmark, Lithuania, Nepal and, of course, Latvia. They, with a help of mentors, formed interdisciplinary teams and for 48 hours worked together to develop new high-tech ideas based on smart materials. Initially there were 9 ideas submitted and 5 of them were developed and presented to the jury, scientists and potential investors by the end of the event.
Some of the submitted ideas included sheep wool filter for water purification, an application that helps to get out of the building or ferry in case of emergency, an autonomous robot that disinfects water supply systems and a GPS animal-strap that works using heat of animal’s body.
The teams were consulted by international mentors such as Professor Anders Hallen of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, innovation coach Molly Rogstadius and business expert Ervin Alic of RISE (Research Institutes of Sweden) and Marko Mueller, Managing Director of MARKOPRENEUR GmbH, who has extensive experience in training of design thinking and by local mentors such as Viesturs Sosārs from TechHub, Lauma Muizniece from the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia and Ernests Štāls, co-founder of TechChill.
