News Releases

The UWI Team wins Code Sprint

For Release Upon Receipt - February 16, 2012

St. Augustine


The University of the West Indies’ (UWI), St. Augustine’s Campus IT Services team won the regional Code Sprint Competition with their application “Fishing Gear Analyzer.”

The Code Sprint was pitched at a young audience and was very well attended with well over 100 participants, predominantly from local high schools and The UWI. Code sprinters were given 24 hours after being briefed on the terms of reference, key tools and datasets to be used.

The Code Sprint, held as part of a multi-country event revolving around an Open Data Conference, was conducted by teams led by Matthew McNaughton of UWI’s Mona School of Business in Jamaica; Yacine Khelladi of Fundacion Taigüey in the Dominican Republic, and Dr Kim Mallalieu, leading UWI’s CIRP (TT) in Trinidad and Tobago. The local events were hosted by the Faculty of Engineering on the St. Augustine Campus of The UWI from January 26-27, 2012.

Trinidad and Tobago focused on ICT access, small scale fisheries and agriculture. The Jamaican event focused on the areas of agriculture, trade and economic indicators, and tourism. The Dominican Republic event did not specify thematic focal points within a broad developmental scope.

Applications were assessed by an expert panel of judges on the basis of launch-ability, open data usage, originality and problem solving, features and usefulness, user experience/user interface, long term potential and presentations. The top three teams of the 15 registered in Trinidad and Tobago were awarded first, second and third place trophies and prize monies of US$2000, US$1000 and US$500 respectively. UWI St. Augustine’s Campus IT Services came up the winners with “Fishing Gear Analyzer.” Digital Business took second place with “Fisherman’s Friend,” an at-sea emergency directory. Another UWI team, this one comprised of students, came third with “Crop Out” an agriculture analytics application. Teams expressed a general interest in further developing their applications and, in the case of Digital Business, taking the application “up the islands.”

For further information, please contact Dr Kim Mallalieu, at (868) 662-2002 Ext. 83191.

For the latest UWI News, click http://sta.uwi.edu/news.

About UWI

Over the last six decades, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged University with over 40,000 students. Today, UWI is the largest and most longstanding higher education provider in the English-speaking Caribbean, with main campuses in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and Centres in Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Christopher (St Kitts) & Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent & the Grenadines. UWI recently launched its Open Campus, a virtual campus with over 50 physical site locations across the region, serving over 20 countries in the English-speaking Caribbean. UWI is an international university with faculty and students from over 40 countries and collaborative links with over 60 universities around the world. Through its seven Faculties, UWI offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Pure & Applied Sciences, Science and Agriculture, and Social Sciences.

 

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)

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