Got a science problem? Give it a hack

The bright ideas came thick and fast at Dublin’s Science Hack Day – and creative solutions were never far behind

HAVE YOU EVER pulled an all-nighter for work or in the run-up to an exam? You’ll know how coffee and determination can fuel you through the long-haul session. But how about a full weekend? For fun?

Earlier this month, Science Hack Day saw scientists, engineers, designers and various computer experts assemble at Dublin City University for a marathon stretch of collaboration to come up with “hacks” to solve problems or develop ideas.

They turned up, bright-eyed and eager on the Saturday morning to hear “lightning talks” outlining the ideas and problems that were looking for solutions.

Teams formed and got going, and by the Sunday afternoon each group presented what they had done.

When I arrive on Sunday, the teams are still working and the hall has a distinctly lived-in look: benches are strewn with bits of computers, pizza boxes, LEDs and bits of string, among other things.

So what’s it all about?

“A science hack day is an event where the focus is on creating stuff, usually trying to solve a scientific problem,” explains one of the organisers, David McKeown.

He is a mechanical engineer working at University College Dublin on a contract for the European Space Agency. But he’s also a Science Hack Day enthusiast, and last year went to San Francisco as an ambassador to take part in a hack there and learn how to run such an event.

At the San Francisco hack, McKeown worked on a team that scooped a prize for an early-warning system for earthquakes – they harnessed accelerometers in smartphones and developed sensors for houses so that warning signals for earthquakes could be crowdsourced and relayed to a server.

When McKeown came back to Dublin, he worked with Ellen Byrne, Alan Armstrong and several community groups to organise the Dublin event, which had various sponsors and formed part of Dublin City of Science 2012 and Engineering Week.

“We didn’t know how many people we were going to get, so we said we would take the Kevin Costner approach to event management – build it and they will come,” he says. “And in the end we had a waiting list. We had 195 people register for 120 places; we were completely oversubscribed.”

Some participants stayed at the event the entire weekend, and after around 30 hours, the demos covered a range of solutions. They included “sports wiki” software that lets you log real-time incidents such as goals and passes from the sidelines at a football match, an “internet-ometer” to measure internet usage at the event, software to predict locations for viewing the Northern Lights and even crocheted versions of biological structures such as blood cells and antibodies.

The judging panel – which included this reporter – then met and awarded category prizes for innovation and achievement.

And the overall winner was an augmented reality game that marries chemistry with orienteering: players with equipped phones have to find elements at various locations.

That was the brainchild of software developer and designer Brian Solon, and inspiration struck just in time for the event.

“On the night before the hack day, I started thinking about ideas; I had one to make an augmented trail around the periodic table of the elements,” he says.

Having experience of developing these types of games before, he thought the periodic table could be a good starting point.

“There are different atomic numbers, so there’s a grading system, and the idea was also to create challenges for people: maybe if they collected Na and Cl they could get bonus points . When I stumbled on that idea, I got a bit excited.”

Solon and his team developed the idea over the course of the weekend – though he admits he did leave to get some sleep – and tried it out at a few locations around the campus.

“I didn’t get the game element finished on Sunday, but I got such a kick out of it. I want to take it further,” he says.

The focus of the event is on development and innovation rather than generating a business plan, notes McKeown. “You want to get people creating the ideas first,” he says. “You have people with pizza and energy drinks, and you give them high-speed internet and let them be creative. We are trying to produce an environment were innovative ideas emerge in an organic way. The focus is finding clever solutions and not writing business plans or making pitches. If an idea is strong, then it might get to that stage and if so great, but that is for another day. Science Hack Day is about supporting the type of person who enjoys working on an idea and is willing to give up a bit of sleep to see it come to life. It is an event for people who can create, not just package.

DCU president Prof Brian Mac Craith, who opened the event and who was part of the judging panel, says the approach links into the wider concept of stimulating a culture of innovation.

“Often it’s about the formulation of a problem statement or opportunity statement, then bringing complementary expertise together in a convergent environment, then it’s about problem solving,” he says.

“It is practice-based learning, rather than talking about innovation; this is experiencing innovation in action. You are going from formulation of opportunity right through to at least an interim solution in a convergent, intense, creative atmosphere. I was really taken by that.”

SCIENCE HACK DAY: THE WINNING IDEAS

WHAT BETTER WAY to get kids learning about chemistry – and having a good run around – than setting them on a treasure hunt for elements? That's the idea behind the hack that won "best in show" at the Science Hack Day in Dublin earlier this month.

Developed by Brian Solon and team-mates, the augmented-reality trail places virtual elements at various locations then players locate and find out about them using their smartphones.

Other winning hacks included Y-Path, an online tool that lets students record how much physical activity they do on a daily or weekly basis, technology to render live data from financial markets as sounds to alert traders to changing conditions, and an ambitious project to develop software that can analyse data about solar storms and help users find out the best locations to view the Northern Lights.

Another hack on the winners podium had the potential to let sports fans on the sidelines contribute to a "wiki" of a match, using their phones to register events such as goals, passes and bookings.