On August 13-14, 2021, the Dynamic Brain Circuits in Health and Disease Cluster, the BC Brain Wellness Program, and the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health hosted the Brain-Tech 2021: Idea Generation and Hackathon for Brain Wellness. This virtual event brought together eight teams (38 individuals) consisting of students and researchers from diverse fields to brainstorm and prototype novel applications to support brain wellness. These applications could either improve brain wellness directly through the encouragement of healthy lifestyles or indirectly by contributing to the study and dissemination of brain wellness concepts. Researchers and students studying healthcare, neuroscience, computer science, and biomedical engineering were invited to contribute their unique expertise to this event. Successful teams developed the concept for an app, software tool, or program to aid the mission of the BC Brain Wellness Program.
EVALUATION
Projects were evaluated on the novelty, impact, usability, creativity and technical innovation, and polish. The judges included Yundi Wang, Catherine Winstanley, Jeremy Seamans, and Martin McKeown.
WINNERS
Team LOUD created LOUDy Bird, a modified version of the famous game Flappy Bird. LOUDy Bird was specifically tailored to fulfill the therapeutic needs of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) patients by facilitating the movement and speech exercises which can improve PD symptoms and slow down disease progression. The project aims to make these exercise routines a lot more fun while tailoring them to each patients’ specific needs and abilities. Watch their project video below:
Read more about all the projects that were developed here.
BRAIN-TECH 2021 HACKATHON INNOVATION SHOWCASE:
On Friday, October 8th, winners of Brain-Tech 2021 will discuss and demo their work. This colloquium will take place in Rudy North and on Zoom at 11 AM. This is part of the Neuroscience Research Colloquium.
Zoom Meeting ID: 95496 072083
Passcode: 072083
