Join Coders and Inventors to Transform Problems into Solutions at the CSM Velocity Center’s Climate Change Hackathon March 30-31

Registration is now open for College of Southern Maryland (CSM) Velocity X Climate Innovation Hackathon where participating teams will solve real world challenges by inventing, designing and testing solutions to solve the impact of climate change. Held at the Velocity Center in Indian Head, coders and inventors are invited to join community partners for a day of solving community problems March 30 and 31.

"We are excited to present an engaging, collaborative and interdisciplinary day of problem-solving for our community,” said Lesley Quattlebaum, executive director of the Velocity Center. “We already have a number of teams planning to participate, from high schoolers to CSM students to members of the community, and we invite everyone to come out to join us for an exciting day of working together to address issues that affect our region.”

Quattlebaum shared that there will be an informational webinar held this Friday, March 10 from 12-1 p.m. to answer any questions that those interested in participating might have.

“This year the focus is climate, and specifically sea level rise,” she added. “We wanted to pick a topic where teams could easily find data to utilize, but also a topic that we thought people would be passionate about and have a high level of interest in.”

The Data Visualization Challenge will ask teams to create tools that show how sea level rise will impact coastal communities and infrastructure, such as roads and properties. Through the Marketing Strategy Challenge, teams will develop a comprehensive marketing campaign that targets coastal communities in Southern Maryland and increases communication and understanding of government resources available to residents.

“We chose one challenge that was more technology and data driven, and another that was a little broader,” said Quattlebaum. “The great thing about both of these challenges is that teams can be multidisciplinary, you can have individuals on your team with different skill sets.”

This second annual hackathon is presented by CSM in partnership with Ensemble Consultancy and Brightidea who invites teams to compete for prizes from a $12,000 prize pool provided by the CSM Foundation.

Representatives from the Charles County Government, SMECO, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and others are working with CSM to create realistic challenges and judge teams’ solutions.

Student Hassan Turay participated in the hackathon last year as a member of team ‘111%’, which took home the top prize in the Range Testing Analytics Challenge. He said he will be returning to compete again this year.

“I really enjoyed the collaboration part of it,” said Turay, who will be attending the University of Maryland this fall. “The hackathon gave me an opportunity to work with professional programmers and see where my skills are.”

Turay, who is member of CSM’s competitive robotics team. the Talons, the CSM men’s soccer team, and CSM’s Men of Excellence, had advice for the Hackathon participants: “Just breathe and relax, at the end of the day it’s going to be fun and you’ll learn a lot.”

To learn more about and register for the hackathon, visit https://csm.brightidea.com/VelocityX2023.

To register for the informational webinar, visit https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_bu33wHS6RfWN8sQkFD562g?_x_zm_rtaid=bbzi-IpQRI-Hz6CqW9rWoQ.1677775772186.687b3e7174f6841b900446d24daeb6ef&_x_zm_rhtaid=449