MIT to Host Hackathon Follow-on to Beat the Pandemic Event

In early April, MIT hosted the first public event under the MIT COVID-19 Challenge series, Beat the Pandemic. Now, more than two months later, the MIT COVID-19 Challenge is organising a follow-on virtual hackathon, Beat the Pandemic II.

The deadline to apply for participation is Tuesday, May 26, 2020 before midnight. Please visit https://covid19challenge.mit.edu/ for more information and the application.

During Beat the Pandemic II, teams from around the world—drawing from universities, industry, government, and non-profit organizations, among others—will form to address some of the current issues arising from the pandemic, including how to safely return to normal (or the ‘new’ normal) and how to prepare for a potential resurgence of the disease. Continuing teams from the prior Beat the Pandemic event will also join in a separate track designed to further accelerate their efforts.

“Our mission through the MIT COVID-19 Challenge is rapid innovation from ideation to implementation targeting the most critical issues that have arisen from the COVID-19 crisis,” says Freddy Nguyen, an event organizer, Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, and a Pathology Resident at Mount Sinai Hospital. “From the initial virtual hackathons through our follow-on events and support to the teams, we are empowering a new generation of problem-solvers as we build and strengthen this community of innovators and entrepreneurs towards this common cause.”

Participants will form teams on Friday, May 29th to home in on key problems and generate solutions, including proof of concepts, prototypes, and preliminary vision for execution. On Sunday, May 31st, teams will reconvene to present their work. After the weekend, the teams judged as having the most promising ideas will have the opportunity to co-develop and implement their solutions with the support of collaborators. Among the collaborators joining the challenge are, among others:

• MIT Hacking Medicine
• The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
• MIT Innovation Initiative
• US Department of Veterans Affairs
• Takeda
• Holland Innovation Network
• Oregon Health and Science University
• MassBio
• Health~Holland
• Johnson & Johnson Innovation

The first event, COVID19 IDEAathon, was held within the MIT community on March 21, 2020. Beat the Pandemic, the second event and first open to the public, was held on April 3-5, 2020. Africa Takes on COVID-19 was then held on May 1-3, 2020. A data scientist focused Datathon was held from May 10-16.

Source: MIT