Europe’s largest hackathon Junction takes over Aalto University

From AI to mobility, from games and entertainment to health care, over 60 companies and organisations present Junction participants their actual challenges to work on. Coders and designers will work as teams during the weekend with the organisations’ own technologies, data and interfaces.

Junction, now in its third instalment, is run by a volunteer community of students. Initially the event was born out of Aalto Entrepreneurship Society.

“Junction was sparked by the desire to bring out the makers: the coders, designers and everyone who will be the ones to make the next big success stories happen. World-changing breakthroughs come out of inspired people playing around with technology – doing what they love and taking on cool projects by and for themselves. That is exactly what we are doing with Junction," tells Ville Leppälä, Junction CEO and Aalto University student.

Last year’s winners were a team of Aalto students, ’suju.online’, who developed a route optimisation service for robot buses. This year, Junction offers contenders challenges in 13 different themes.

“We have challenges in, for instance, space, health and game technology. One of the most popular themes has proved to be artificial intelligence. With various machine learning methods participants will create news headline robots and personalise digital advertising. They will also get to play with an actual robot and improve its functionalities,” Leppälä enthuses.

Aalto University, as one of Junction’s partners, will also present the international hacker community a challenge together with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, University of Tampere and Tampere University of Technology. Teams will get to create interactive and entertaining content from actual real-time and stored data that electric buses in the Helsinki region gather.

”What makes Junction a unique hackathon is that in the event participants, investors and partners can meet each other through a variety of matchmaking tools. For companies, Junction is a great venue to recruit new technology professionals. For participants, it can open up new job avenues and chances to further their own projects with the help of investor advice,” says Leppälä.

More information:

Anna Brchisky

[email protected]

tel. +35 841 545 8441