Dublin to host International Science Hack Day 2012
Dublin will be the 6th city in the world to host an International Science Hack Day after London, San Francisco, Mexico City, Cincinnati and Cape Town with another 24 planned internationally throughout 2012
Science Hack days have become an international trend successfully bridging the gap between the science, technology and design industries by providing a unique platform for collaboration.
Science Hack Day Dublin is an all-day-all-night event where scientists, engineers, programmers and designers join forces to find solutions (hacks) for scientist’s problems during a brief but intense period of collaboration (36 hours).
Science Hack Day creates a physical space for scientists to collaborate with programmers, hackers and designers who have the knowledge to find creative solutions or ‘hacks’ to better use scientists data, hardware and research tools – whether it is to collate, visualise, categorise or simply to do science better.
Science Hack Days help to find more efficient ways of utilising open data produced from scientific research, city councils, online applications and leads to creative custom tools that help to create better science.
The event begins with two rounds of lightening talks where scientists (or those with an interesting idea) can pitch project ideas to teams of programmers, hackers, engineers and designers - who them form teams to work on the projects over the next 36 hours period.
This collaborative approach to problem solving (hacking) has produced significant results in other cities – with the most recent Science Hack Day in San Francisco covering a wide variety of scientific projects. Dublin’s Science Hack Day Ambassador Dr. David McKeown’s team won the Best Government Data Award in San Fransisco for a smartphone based early-warning notification system for earthquakes.
Other projects utilised open data resources from the Large Hadron Collider, NASA and PLoS (Public Library of Science) while spanning a range of fields including cognitive science, marine science and underwater exploration, geophysical smartphone apps, DIY biohacking and data visualization.
The first Science Hack Days were held in London and San Francisco in 2010 – Ariel Waldman, founder of San Francisco Science Hack Day was in Dublin this week for the launch of Science Hack Day Dublin. Speaking at the event she said:
“Dublin clearly has a strong community of passionate geeks, already bridging gaps between science, technology and art. Science Hack Day Dublin is the perfect spark to ignite future collaborations and ideas between these communities and anyone who wants to get excited and make things.”
Science Hack Day Dublin is being run as part of the Dublin City of Science 2012 programme festival and Engineers Week. Science Hack Day Dublin relies on a large team of volunteers, from different creative community groups (Irish Robotics Club, Dublin Hackerspace TOG, Redbrick and The Hub, DCU) and is being coordinated by Dr. David McKeown and Science Communicator Ellen Byrne.
Science Hack Day Dublin is supported by CarTrawler, Fingal Open Data and Engineers Ireland and is being run in association with Dublin City of Science 2012, who all help keep the event free and openly accessible.
Science Hack Day Dublin will take place in The Hub in Dublin City University on Saturday the 3rd and Sunday the 4th of March, 2012.
The event is free but tickets must be booked in advance at http://www.sciencehackdaydublin.com
