Bulgarian and Polish winners
of the Global Impact Competition CEE
More than 130 projects from 13 countries applied for Singularity University’s annual Global Impact Competition for Central and Eastern Europe. The Finals, in Budapest, saw two winners selected from 8 finalists this year.
Stefan Ivanov (Bulgaria) and Pawel Jarmolkowicz (Poland) won the 3rd Global Impact Competition, their award being a place, each, at the Graduate Studies Program of Singularity University based in the NASA Research Park. Singularity University’s 2014 GSP program is scheduled for June 14-August 24, 2014.
The challenge of the Global Impact Competition is to come up with a project that has the potential to improve the lives of at least one million people in the CEE region within three years, using exponentially developing technology.
Stefan Ivanov, Bulgaria
Project: Stepsss
Stepsss is a smart pair of insoles with embedded sensors that stream data about a patient’s walking behaviour wirelessly to a mobile device. Important events and patterns are extracted and delivered to servers via the Internet. At the same time, feedback is provided both on their smartphone screen and through the hardware in real time. Upon receiving patient data, the online system builds a “recovery diary” at a very detailed level which is also accessible for the doctor and physiotherapist.
Pawel Jarmolkowicz, Poland
Project: Harimata
Globally there are two major health conditions that are spreading throughout our population - autism for kids, and depression for adults. Early diagnosis and intervention can improve lives of affected people but also reduce costs of lifelong care by 2/3rds. By making early diagnostics easy and widely available,millions of people can benefit. This technology can be put into any mobile application or game, where the diagnosis process would go on in the background automatically, without any professionals’ assistance. By applying data mining and machine learning algorithms Harimata will develop models for identifying behavioural patterns which indicate a particular disorder.
Singularity University (SU), is an organisation based at the NASA Research Park in the heart of Silicon Valley, California. The University is a central destination for scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs, executives and government officials.
SU’s mission is to educate, inspire and empower bright minds to apply exponential technologies to address humanity’s grand challenges. The University’s flagship program is the Graduate Studies Program (GSP) that acts as a platform for turning innovative ideas into concrete actions.
Those who meet the tough entrance requirements will take part in an extremely intensive training, which includes demanding courses, trips to the biggest enterprises in Silicon Valley – e.g. Facebook, NASA, Google, Cisco – and visits to the most exciting start-ups in the area. During the course, students work side-by-side with the biggest names of the Valley. By the end of the 10-week program projects developed during the course frequently become real businesses, and enter SU Labs, the University’s own business incubator.