On December 11th, the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that the "Best Use of Science" award in this year's Space Apps Challenge global hackathon has been granted to Ani's Cuff of Taiwan. The "Best Use of Science" award recognizes "the solution that makes the best and most valid use of science and/or the scientific method."
Ani's Cuff is a team of six full-time engineers and designers who overcame challenges of time, location, and technical difficulties to form their team and utilize each member's expertise to promote the diversity of insects in Taiwan through the theme "Seeing the Unseeable, Viewing Bugs from Space". By combining geographic and biological information, they were able to encode cross-species relationships such as symbiosis or competition using the "bio-vector" calculated from the distribution of Taiwan's local species. Their work is mutually beneficial for humans and all other living things on Earth, thus allowing it to become one of the 10 winning teams in NASA's global hackathon this year.
The NASA Space Apps Challenge is a multi-themed competition in which contestants must use a variety of publicly available materials to brainstorm creative ideas for solutions to problems faced by humanity and the planet. This year, roughly 28,000 competitors from over 320 cities around the world participated in the challenge.
The NASA Space Apps Challenge is divided into regional competitions, after which the global competition is held. The 2021 Space Apps Taipei competition was co-hosted by the American Institute in Taiwan, the Taipei City Government, NARLabs' National Space Organization, and g0v jothon and held on October 2nd and 3rd. In total, 38 teams and 182 participants registered to compete, and ultimately, Pluto.edu.tw, Ani's Cuff, and iEntropy were selected as representative teams for the global competition.
Learn more about the project by Ani's Cuff:
https://2021.spaceappschallenge.org/challenges/statements/seeing-the-unseeable-viewing-bugs-from-space/teams/anis-cuff/project
