Keeping the spirit of innovation flying high among students

The SIA AppChallenge has been an annual highlight in NUS Enterprise’s event calendar since 2015, when NUS Enterprise and SIA first organised the inaugural challenge. What began as a hackathon for local tertiary students has today grown into a global digital challenge that welcomes solutions from startups and students alike from across the world.

This year, while the startup track remains in its current format, the organisers decided to bring back the hackathon format for the local student category. Due to COVID-19, however, the hackathon would be held virtually, rather than a physical event in earlier years. The pandemic did little to dampen the spirit of participants, with some 130 teams and 300 students registering for the SIA AppChallenge Student Hackathon, which took place from 21 to 23 August 2020.

The theme for this year’s student hackathon revolved around providing a seamless ground experience for SIA’s passengers, and students could tackle one of three challenge categories, which were Baggage Operations, Lounge Operations, as well as a Wildcard category.

Starting from the evening of 21 August, the participants went through a grueling 60 hours of hacking, with guidance from mentors from SIA and NUS Enterprise, as well as support from the organising team. From the submitted solutions, 10 teams were shortlisted to proceed to the finale on 23 August, where they made their best pitch to the judging panel comprising SIA’s senior managment.

Congratulations to all the winners of this year’s AppChallenge!

Participants posing for a group photo