Bucharest

WELCOME TO NASA SPACE APPS CHALLENGE 2020 IN BUCHAREST!

For the fourth year in a row, Bucharest will take part in the largest global hackathon! Join us on October 2-4th for the 2020 International Space Apps Challenge, virtual edition!

Click here for all relevant details (AGENDA, communication channels, mentors, jury members, etc.)

What is NASA Space Apps Challenge?

On October 3-4, NASA is inviting coders, entrepreneurs, scientists, designers, storytellers, makers, builders, artists, and technologists to come together in a global, virtual hackathon. During the weekend, participants from around the world will come together to create virtual teams and solve challenges using NASA’s open-source data.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the interest of our global community’s health and safety, this year’s hackathon will be an all-virtual event. In other words, all local events will be moved online. In this unprecedented time, the Space Apps community exists as a reminder that we have the tools and talents to tackle the challenges that face our planet, as well as the ability to unite across boundaries and borders of all kinds. Our theme for this year’s event -- “Take Action” -- is a critical reminder that you can make a difference, even from the comfort and safety of home.

You can take a look at the International 2019 Space Apps Summary Bucharest, to see how it went last year. As for NASA SpaceApps Challenge in Bucharest, here is our story from 2019:

And the one from 2018

Who can participate in the hackathon?

Space Apps is for everyone! This includes those who have never “hacked’ before! All passionate problem solvers are encouraged to join - students, experts, engineers, makers, artists, and storytellers. While some of our challenges are technical, others ask you to use your artistic skills, your business acumen, and your historical imaginations! In other words, you do not need to be a coder or data expert to be part of Space Apps. In fact, the most diverse teams are often the most successful.

The event is free and open to the public. Participation is limited to a number of 100 participants.

Over the weekend you will work together to develop an innovative solution to your challenge (be it a website, a mobile app, a concept or a hardware prototype). Your team will present the solution to a jury of experts. The best solutions will then compete on a global level!

Here are some of thereasons why you should participate. Come join in this collaborative, problem-solving, open innovation competition!

Follow us on the Bucharest event’s page, on our national Facebook, or join our national Facebook group.

How are we going to challenge you this year?

The 2020 edition has 6 major themes. These categories are:

• Observe
• Inform
• Sustain
• Create
• Confront
• Connect

Click on each of them for the detailed categories and make your choice from the generous topics offer.

Contact us if you want to volunteer or to support us as a partner or sponsor. You are more than welcome to join us.

Our partners and supporters:

Thales

Fundatia Telekom Romania

Grow with Google

Stiinta & Tehnica

Space Hub

Cloud Soft

Armada by Nemira

Sandler Training Romania

Smart Learning, not Hard Working

INCAS

AIESEC

Cluj-Hub

Difine PR

Digital Transformers

Jury members:

• Bogdan NICULAE @ Engineering Manager Thales. He is an Engineering Manager with a strong background in Software Development and Configuration Management. Responsible for the Thales Alenia Space Engineering Business Unit in Thales Systems Romania.
• Gabriel Trăistaru is the Digital Director of the Digital Division within Telekom Romania and is mainly responsible for implementing new, innovative digital solutions to streamline the company's operations, for sales on digital channels, promoting the MyAccount mobile application and ebill among customers. Gabriel Trăistaru holds a bachelor's and master's degree in Political Science, both obtained at the University of Bucharest, and a diploma in Management, obtained at The Open University UK through the CODECS Foundation in Romania. In addition, he graduated from the Marketing & Communication Academy Advanced Program at The Chartered Institute of Marketing. He has over 10 years of experience in digital marketing, e-commerce, and digital communication in multinational companies and non-profit organizations.
• George V. Scripcariu - Co-Founder Space HUB. He is a graduate of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Faculty of Computers, software engineering department, database specialization. He was an AI professor in Japan since 1992, was a senior consultant at strategic and technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, worked in business development in global markets at SOFTWIN, and as marketing director at SAP Integrator. In 2011 he was the only Romanian admitted to the GSP'11 program of the renowned Singularity University in Silicon Valley, USA, which aims to "train global leaders with a positive impact on at least 1 million earthlings through exponential technologies", including space. In 2012 he became District Marketing Manager (Europe Region) within the Space Colony Earth project. He was also a Senior Consultant in the Lunar Space Elevator, Asgardia, and Arcanum projects. In 2016 he co-founded Space Hub (http://spacehub.ro) and was instrumental in admitting the startup to the prestigious business accelerators Y Combinator (Silicon Valley, USA), InnovX (Romania), and IBH (Romania). In the summer of this year, Mr. Scripcariu became a member of the European Startup Association, which he represents in Romania.
• Florin Păun, Innovation Director in France, practitioner, and theoretician of the evolutions of the innovation models and tools, Dr. Florin Paun encourages the comprehension of the human factors and behaviors during the collaborative processes as innovation building thus bridges between the world of practitioners and the world of scientists and economists. His scientific work, based on more of 200 projects he worked on, gained worldwide recognition and put in light the emergence of a new innovation French model but also completed the theories of two Nobel Prize Winners (Stiglitz, J., Sen. A) after having applied and adapted them to the highly collaborative processes like innovation. His strategies and tools aim to support the creation of the shared value between research laboratories, SMEs, multinationals, and regions with more than 70 technology transfer agreements succeeded. Innovation director in the aerospace sector in France, Dr. Florin Paun, (former Deputy Innovation Director at ONERA and Strategy and Development Director at the Competitive Pole SAFE – PACA region) started its career in the aerospace research being specialized in structures and multifunctional materials (15 scientific articles, 4 patents). Educated at the Aerospace Faculty in Bucharest, in Ecole Plytechnique (Palaiseau, Grand Paris), Dr. Florin Paun made a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in Toulouse (ENSICA) and completed his education with a Master in Management and Leadership at MIT Sloan (United States). Entrepreneur and Business Angel (Celidea, Progonline.com…) Florin is President of the French Start-up Xvaluator.co. As French Romanian innovation leader, Dr. Florin Paun is one of the 5 French experts and one of the 2 Romanian experts in the Pilot Jury of the European Council of Innovation. Expert-Inventor of several tools and methods for collaborative innovation such as « Demand Readiness Level » («DRL» (market pull tool) completing the «TRL» (NASA tech push tool), « Contract of shared risks and benefits », « asymmetries identification and compensation in the highly collaborative process »), Dr. Paun is teaching its own innovation methods in international Schools for Master Degrees students and is a senior advisor in innovation collaborative process of innovation and impact of human factors for Governments, multinationals, networks of practitioners, European INTRA-PRENEURS, Innovation School of ANRT in Paris (ANRT Ecole de l`Innovation), ISAE, Ecole de l’Air, ENAC, ESEO, Toulouse Business School. Dr. Florin Paun is author of several scientific articles and books on open innovation strategies including the contributions of more than 50 international business and political leaders in the last 10 years: « J’innove donc je suis » (I innovate so I existe!) , « Tous entre-preneurs » (All Entre-Preneurs), « Innover ou périr » (Innovate or disappear).
• Radu IONESCU - Co-founder of SecurifAI and Professor Dr. Department of Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty of Mathematics-Informatics of the University of Bucharest. Radu is CTO at SecurifAI and Professor at the University of Bucharest, Romania. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Bucharest in 2013. He received the 2014 Award for Outstanding Doctoral Research in the field of Computer Science from the Romanian Ad Astra Association. His research interests include machine learning, text mining, computer vision, image processing, and computational biology. He published over 70 articles at international peer-reviewed conferences and journals, and a research monograph with Springer. He received the "Caianiello Best Young Paper Award" at ICIAP 2013 for the paper entitled "Kernels for Visual Words Histograms". Radu also received the "Young Researchers in Science and Engineering" Prize organized by prof. Rada Mihalcea for young Romanian researchers in all scientific fields. Together with other co-authors, he obtained good rankings at several international competitions: 4th place in the Facial Expression Recognition Challenge of WREPL 2013, 3rd place in the NLI Shared Task of BEA-8 2013, 2nd place in the ADI Shared Task of VarDial 2016, 1st place in the ADI Shared Task of VarDial 2017, 1st place in the NLI Shared Task of BEA-12 2017.
• Cristian ROMÂN is a senior editor of the Știintă & Tehnică magazine, where he started in 1992. He is a graduate of the Aerospace Engineering faculty. Between 2008 and 2012 he produced programs targeting the science fans at TVRM. In 2003, respectively 2006 he received the UNESCO Romania CNR Prize for Science Journalism, in the written press section. He published the book The Universe - the last adventure. In 2019 he received the Romanian Academy Award "Petre Sergescu" (History of Science and Technology).
• Ulpia BOTEZATU - research engineer with the Romanian Space Agency since 2012. Since 2007 she has been active in research and education as a university assistant and research assistant both in Romania and in the United States of America, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Her main positions were related to critical infrastructure security at urban, national, and European levels. She worked at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and in 2016 she graduated from the National Defense College, the National Intelligence Academy, as well as the courses of the European Security Center in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Currently, she is a ROSA researcher, juggling with few projects in her area of research interests, being also a delegate of Romania to the European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking Consortium and other intergovernmental agencies in the field of Space Situational Awareness and critical space infrastructure protection.

Mentors

• Thales - Andrei Ghinea - Front-End developer at Thales Systems Romania since August this year. He participated in numerous technical hack-a-thons and as a mentor for the COVID-19 Call to Action organized by the European Commission this spring.
• Thales -Cristian Micu - Software Engineer, Team Lead, Space industry. Passionate about science, physics, and Artificial Intelligence.
• Thales -Bogdan Niculae - Engineering Manager with a strong background in Software Development and Configuration Management. Responsible for the Thales Alenia Space Engineering Business Unit in Thales Systems Romania.
• Thales -Radu Marinescu - R&D Engineer for Signal Processing and Embedded Systems, exploring Space, Data Science & Artificial Intelligence. He seeks to add value to his professional projects based on his solid knowledge and experience over software and hardware embedded systems, signal processing techniques in audio, speech, and telecommunication domains, academic research, and tutoring, always aiming for innovative approaches.
• Telekom Romania - Gabriel Trăistaru, Digital Director of the Digital Division
• Florin Păun, Innovation Director, Entrepreneur and Business Angel, author of scientific papers
• Space Hub - TBD

Moderator - Vlad Conovaru, Producer @ TANANANA 🚀

Vlad is 39 years old, born in Bucharest. He is a media passionate, in all its forms - written, audio, video, and online. Radio is his first love, but television has fulfilled it, and the online adventure has shown him what freedom to create really means. Music is one of his passions and he just loves to find a soundtrack for any type of activity. When he's not doing this, he likes to talk about it and introduce it to those he hasn't reached yet - that's one of his missions as a radio host. He believes that natural, honest communication is the key to reach the soul of the public.

GDPR agreement

Even if our goals are intergalactic, we must obey earthly laws. Enrolling in the competition also implies the agreement for the organizers to use your personal data (as per this document). If you do not want to do this, please contact the organizers.

Due to the same earthly rules, children under 14 must be registered by an adult.

Our values

Space Apps is a place where every person feels they belong, where they are comfortable being authentic, and where they are empowered to contribute to their fullest. If you experience or witness discrimination, harassment, or any form of bullying during the Space Apps Challenge, or have any other concerns, please contact your Local Lead and/or the Space Apps Global Organizing Team at conduct@spaceappschallenge.org