The first edition of the “Blue Biotech Hackathon” took place last October (18th, 19th and 20th) at the University of Algarve and at Sala Azul in Albufeira.
Seminars, brainstorming and team building were held at the University of Algarve, and in Albufeira the program under the motto “join us to innovate and create solutions in Biotechnology, Science and Industry”, included the presentation of projects and respective results before a jury appointed for that purpose.
The winning project “Groundwater Monitoring App” was based on the creation of a “meteorological app” aimed at monitoring groundwater levels in the Algarve, presenting monthly monitoring data from APA. The application, which uses fictitious data, is available at .
In second place was the “State of Fisheries” project, which consists of creating an interactive panel that compiles fish catches and fishing efforts in the Atlantic, using IPMA data, in order to highlight overfishing trends.
The third was attributed to the “AI for Agriculture” project, which is related to the development of a deep learning model to predict the sugar content in Pera Rocha, based on non-invasive measurements from the CEOT – Research Center based at UAlg.
In addition to the awards, 3 Honorable Mentions were awarded to the following projects: Seagrass restoration, using Inductiva.AI simulators, with which the team explored the ideal locations for restoring seagrass in the Ria Formosa; “Fish stock simulations”, in which in just a few hours, engineers from Inductiva.AI and an IPMA member converted IPMA’s ocean fish stock simulations to high-performance computing, opening the door to more efficient and better policies models and, finally, the “Food Safety” project through the presentation of a proposal aimed at detecting bacterial contamination in plantations, using optical methods and artificial intelligence.
To end the event, the Municipality of Albufeira held a public session pitching, open to the public, on Inatel beach.
The president of the Municipality of Albufeira highlights the importance of the event due to the fact that it brings together in the city, for 2 days, biologists, data scientists, engineers and industry, sectors that daily face different challenges, for which, together, they try to find solutions with impact on marine science and technology”.
José Carlos Rolo says that “Tourism is the main activity of the municipality and the region”, drawing, however, attention to “the need to diversify the base of the economy, particularly in areas related to fishing, agriculture, science and industry, among other areas”.
The Fisheries Monitoring Challenge launched by the main objectives was to gather data on catches, which are subsequently used to track the abundance of large migratory species, as well as the status of fish. stocks fishing grounds, said Rui Coelho, coordinator of the IPMA Large Migrators Group.
The initiative sought to “develop an informative visualization tool, not only for scientists, but also for the general public.
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