Ramallah – Gaza – Together – Al Nayzak Foundation for Scientific Creativity, in partnership with the Swedish Diakonia Foundation, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Supreme Council for Creativity and Excellence, and the Informatics Sciences Syndicate, concluded the annual Palestine Challenge for the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence 2023, with the participation of projects from the Gaza Strip via video conference technology.
This year, a group of creative projects from all governorates of the country were submitted to the challenge, distributed into three categories: startup companies, university graduation projects, and school student projects. Palestinian girls were distinguished this year by innovative scientific and technological projects, as the percentage of girls participating in the challenge this year reached 62%, and this comes as As part of the continuous effort to integrate women with expertise in technological fields, especially future professions such as the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence.
The challenge activities included a final judging round, where the participants presented their projects to the judging committees, which were made up of experts nominated by the partners. For his part, Dr. Rashid Al-Jayousi, Chairman of the National Jury, praised the quality of the competing projects this year. He also stressed the importance of this competition and its encouragement of young innovators and the opportunity for them to work diligently and continuously. In completing their projects to be a source of hope for Palestine and an essential support for the national economy to achieve sustainable development.
In the same context, Engineer Arif Al-Husseini, founder and president of Al-Nayzak Foundation, expressed his pride in the success of cooperation with an elite group of partners in attracting all young Palestinian innovations and talents, in an initiative that would shape the digital future of Palestine.
The names of eight winning projects have been announced to be sent to Dubai in the middle of next month (October) to represent Palestine in the “Arab Challenge for the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence 2023.” The results were as follows:
For the startup category:
1. Jusoor Labs project, owned by Amin Abu Diak from the city of Nablus, is a platform for education through interactive virtual laboratories, which provide comprehensive educational experiences in the field of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics for students from all over the world.
2. The “Alera” project, owned by Souad Zaid from the city of Ramallah, is a smart electronic chip that works with artificial intelligence and replaces the business identification card and interacts with all the smart systems in our lives and also communicates with social media platforms, sends commands, receives information, analyzes it, and learns it.
3. The Cry Care project, owned by Mona Al-Razi from Gaza City, is an application that analyzes, with the help of artificial intelligence, the reason for the child’s crying, and provides advice in case of danger under the supervision of doctors.
Regarding the category of graduation projects in universities:
1. The iCare Ecosystem project, owned by Yona Nawadhda from the city of Ramallah, is a device built on artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things and is considered a means of getting rid of pathogens and limiting their spread.
2. The Life Bracelet project by its owner, Ibrahim Zaid, from the city of Jenin. It is a project to prevent drownings in swimming pools, which works by measuring the user’s vital signs and giving signals to the monitoring room.
3. The smart energy management project, owned by Youssef Shahwan from the Gaza Strip, is a project specialized in the Internet of Things and controlling different sources of energy through the network and distributing it to devices and systems in the home or facility in the most appropriate manner, which ensures cost reduction and does not waste energy without benefit.
Won in the School Student Projects category:
1. The Motherhood Guide Project, by its owner, Layali Al-Khatib, from the city of Jenin. It is an application that helps mothers and fathers understand the needs of the infant through the sound of his crying and his body movements using artificial intelligence technology.
2. A project to examine your eyes at home, by its owner, Moamen Abdel Fattah, from the city of Nablus. It consists of glasses that automatically examine vision after wearing them, control the grades via a phone application, and provide data on the type of vision problem that you suffer from.
It is worth noting that the Palestine Challenge for the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence went through several stages to select the projects participating in the exhibition and the final ceremony. Among the 243 projects submitted for the challenge from various governorates of the country, including those nominated by the Arab American University and Palestine Polytechnic University, 41 projects were selected to participate in Introductory and training workshops. In the final stage, they participated in the final exhibition based on criteria approved by the Scientific Committee, which were divided between graduation projects for university students, startup companies, and student projects.
Source: Maan News Agency
