Team 'Monks' comprising of six students of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology at the Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) University has won Smart India Hackathon 2020 (SIH2020) Software Edition in problem statement NS275. The team also won a cash prize of Rs. 1,00,000.
Team Monks of the JMI built a software system to help the agriculture sector by finding land usage in 6 different classes and predicting crop production for the next year, which will eventually help the government to plan their policies by anticipating problems of low rainfall and flood, even before they happen.
Team Monks emerged as winners of NS275 problem statement at the end of 36 hours long Hackathon. This problem statement was given by the Bihar government as it faces the problem of floods almost every year.
Apart from team Monk three other teams from the Faculty of Engineering and Technology, JMI reached the final rounds of different problem statement but they could not win.
Smart India Hackathon (SIH) is organised by the Innovation Cell of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) in association with some private organisations. It is a nationwide initiative to provide students with a platform to solve some of the pressing problems faced in daily lives, and thus inculcate a culture of product innovation and a mindset of problem-solving.
The problem statements are submitted by Central Departments, State Ministries and Industries etc. in the Hackathon. This initiative started in 2017. This year, the 4th edition of SIH was conducted virtually because of Covid-19 pandemic.
First stage was a college level hackathon and teams which got selected from their respective colleges, chose problem statements in which they wanted to work and sent their entries with theoretical solutions.
Under the guidance of Prof Tanvir Ahmad, team 'Monk' with five students from third year Computer Engineering and one student from second year Electronics and Communication Engineering was formed.
Gaurav Chaudhary (team leader), Pranav Gautam, Neetesh Kaushik, Lakshya Chaudhary, Ashish Singh are all from the Computer Engineering department, and the sixth member from second year is Nashrah Naseem.
Based on submission, 243 Problem Statements were selected for grand finale and 1081 teams were shortlisted for Software Edition.
A 36 hour long hackathon was held from August 1-3 and the result was declared on August 4. 28 problem statements were dropped because no team could find any solution for them. For the remaining 215 problem statements, teams were declared winners.
For problem statement NS275, four teams were selected for final hackathon after qualifying college hackathons and evaluating theoretical submissions.
Teams from JMI won the first and commendable performance prize in 2017 edition, while a team from JMI won 2nd prize in 2018 edition of the Hackathon.
