Four Projects with Bulgarian Participation Awarded at the Pan-European Hackathon EUvsVirus
Four projects with Bulgarian participation were awarded at the hackathon EUvsVirus – the first Pan-European hackathon in the history of the European Union, organized by the European Commission and held under the patronage of Maria Gabriel. The initiative sought innovative solutions for coping with the consequences of COVID-19.
The platform Aidbind is the big winner in the Social & Political Cohesion category. Five out of eight participants in the team are from Bulgaria, the remaining three are from Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. Aidbind is an information platform that connects the units with a shortage of medical equipment in a working chain – hospitals, manufacturers, and donation campaigns.
The second place in the Health & Life category, Protective Equipment sub-category, was for the Bulgarian-Romanian team of Platex. Platex are reusable protective masks from materials, specially treated for virus filtration. In collaboration with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the masks have been tested for virus filtration with a virus similar to SARS_CoV-2. The results show that the ordinary disposable surgical mask has a virus filtration of 36,90%, while a Platex has 90% virus filtration and is made of reusable materials.
The platform Qpon also ranked second in the Digital Finance category, Enable Crowd to Help Financially sub-category. Qpon is a gamified crowdfunding platform for discount vouchers for future use of favorite places of loyal customers.
The third place was won by the interactive solution Trust in Science in the Social and Political Cohesion category, Mitigating Fake News Spreading sub-category. Trust in Science is a platform for teaching people how to recognize scientific data from fake news. The team behind the project also includes participants from the UK, Germany, Denmark, Israel, Ghana, Canada, Poland, and Spain.
Find out more about the projects with Bulgarian participation which will help in the fight of the European Union and the world against COVID-19:
What is Aidbind
More about the platform in a video (in Bulgarian)
Platex
Qpon
Trust in Science
Description of the projects of all winners in the hackathon.
The EUvsVirus hackathon gathered more than 21 000 programmers, engineers, and innovators from all around the world. For 48 hours their creativity, talent and knowledge led to the creation of the record number of over 2160 solutions for coping with the COVID-19 crisis, and 117 solutions were awarded in the six main categories and subcategories.
There were over 300 participants from Bulgaria in the Pan-European hackathon. Among the ambassadors of the initiative for Bulgaria was the Deputy Mayor of Sofia for Digitalization, Innovation, and Economic Development Vladimir Danailov, together with the Minister of Labor and Social Policy Denitsa Sacheva, the Mayor of Chelopech Alexi Kesyakov, the Mayor of Burgas Dimitar Nikolov and the Mayor of Varna Ivan Portnih.