Given that the COVID-19 pandemic is the major concern right now for everyone all over the world including the tech world, all the major behemoths in the industry are trying to find solutions to curb the impact of the virus. Some are launching products, others are donating or funding potential technologies, and some are also organising online hackathons and programs to keep searching for essential solutions for companies and startups. And most of these are actually showing results.
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“Our ongoing efforts to include startups in COVID-19 measures are seeing results”, says Lucien Burm, the chairman of Dutch Startup Association (dSa). “Implementing legislation takes time and many startups cannot afford to wait before taking action.”
If you also want to join this fight against the pandemic with a revolutionary idea, then you should know about these active hackathons happening in the world right now.
DeepHack
Date: May 1 – 3, 2020
EIT Digital’s DeepHack intends to develop data-driven solutions for pandemic and epidemic lifecycle management. Europe’s leading accelerator challenges you to find digital solutions for the same. You can click here to register to take part in this hackathon and the application deadline is April 27, 2020. The DeepHack hackathon will be open for teams of individual entrepreneurs and students, and teams from scaleups, startups, corporates, and SMEs. Of them, 15 teams will be chosen for participation and they can win €15,000 based on the impact on fighting pandemics, business model or its cost-effectiveness, and scalability of the solution.
CoVIDathon
Dates: Phase 1 until April 30, 2020,
Phase 2 until June 1, 2020
CoVIDathon is an AI hackathon to fight the ongoing pandemic crisis that is coordinated by Amsterdam-based tech startup SingularityNET and Ocean Protocol. It brings together blockchain and AI projects and developers to create intelligent decentralised tools to fight COVID-19 and minimise risks from infectious outbreaks in future. In Phase 1, whoever submits an application gets a chance to be chosen for an in-depth mentoring session with judges, mentors, and helpers during Phase 2. But this is optical and you can directly take part in the hackathon.
IBM Call for Code
Deadline: April 27, 2020
The third Call or Code challenge backed by tech giant IBM is also now open. In this, the coders have to accept the challenge on COVID-19 or climate change. Call for Code Global Challenge is recently launched by IBM and the David Clark Cause in partnership with the Linux Foundation and United Nations Human Rights. It is an annual competition inviting data scientists, developers, and business analysis among others to build applications fueled by blockchain, AI, cloud, and IoT to foster solutions related to water sustainability, natural disaster resiliency, and energy sustainability.
Kaggle
Dates: Ongoing
Kaggle is an online community of machine learning practitioners and data scientists. It lets users find and publish data sets, build models in a web-based environment and work with other machine learning engineers and data scientists. Also, they can enter competitions to resolve data science challenges. Right now, there is a series of Kaggle projects focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and these projects focus on epidemiology and forecasting.
Health and Security Pandemics
Dates: June 18, 2020
MIT Solve is a marketplace for social impact innovation. It has established the Global Health Security & Pandemics Challenge to slow down and track the spread of COVID-19. Ada Health is a member of the organisation and has developed an AI-powered COVID-19 personalised screening test. It focuses on developing low-cost rapid diagnostics, improved individual hygiene, data analysis for informed decision making, and tools that protect and support health workers.
ReStartup: A support program
Last but not the least, the Dutch Startup Association (dSa) has launched ReStartup, a support program to help startups manage and recover from the coronavirus pandemic. ReStartup wants to ensure that startups get back on their feet and recover from the impact once the lockdown comes to an end. It will focus on how startups should handle the effects of COVID-19, how to prepare for and deal with consequences of decreased consumer spend, funding challenges, and broken supply chains. Click here to join ReStartup program launched by Dutch Startup Association.
Partners who have already agreed to take part in the crisis recovery program include, EY, Booking.com, Peerby, Moneybird, Springest, PR.co, GreenFish, 10X The Startup Agency, RockStart, Startup Bootcamp, World Startup, Peak Capital, HenQ, Holland Ventures, Prime Ventures, Keen Venture Partners, Dutch Students for Entrepreneurship, The Next Web, Stichting Digitale Infrastructuur Nederland, Startup Amsterdam and Allied for Startups.
Topics covered by the program include government regulations, funding, legal, financial forecasting and change management. More details can be found on the official website, and for registration, you can head to this link.
“Startups are essential to the innovation power and growth of the economy. Yet they lack financial bandwidth when it comes to getting experts on board to guide them through the unprecedented crisis the world is currently in,” says Thomas Vles, director of dSa, and initiator of the ReStartup program. “The first priority for startups now is survival, but going back to growth is the end goal.”
Do you know about any such programs or hackathons which should be added to this list, then do write to us at [email protected]
This article is produced in collaboration with StartupAmsterdam. Read more about our partnering opportunities.
Stock photo from anabaraulia/Shutterstock
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