NEWS
In A Competition Launched Ideas Serving the Kingdom’s Issues UoB Wins the First and Second Places in The Artificial Intelligence Hackathon
Sakhir – University of Bahrain (Yasmeen Khalaf)
15 February 2023
University of Bahrain (UoB) students won the first and second places in the Challenge Hackathon for building artificial intelligence applications that serve issues of the Kingdom of Bahrain. The Hackathon was held at the Benefit Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Computing at UoB, with participation of 44 students from UoB and Bahrain Polytechnic.
The names of the winning teams were announced at the closing ceremony, in the presence of the Vice President for Academic Programs and Graduate Studies at UoB, Dr. Mohammed Reda Qadir. As the first place was won by a team from UoB, including students: Mohammed Al-Ammal and Wiam Ajur, who submitted a project in which artificial intelligence was used to display traditional Bahraini clothing, such as Thob Al-Nashel, and Zari clothes, with the aim of revitalizing their industry. While the second place was won by a team from UoB, consisting of students: Mohammed Al-Ashqar, Yousef Mohammed, and Yaqeen Sayed Mohammed. The team trained an artificial intelligence model on the drawings of the artist Abdullah Al-Muharraqi, with the aim of preserving his distinguished style of drawing. In addition, the third place was won by a team from Bahrain Polytechnic consisting of students: Hassan Al-Bari, Ali Ahmed, and Mujtaba Al-Tamam, which used an artificial intelligence application to recreate historical images in the Arab Gulf countries to display them with better quality.
The Challenge Hackathon aims to build artificial intelligence applications that serve the Kingdom of Bahrain, by investing in the capabilities of the Benefit supercomputing laboratory, in addition to training male and female students on the latest technologies and software in supercomputing, machine learning, and building artificial intelligence models.
During the opening of the event, the Dean of the College of Information Technology at UoB, Dr. Hessa Jassim Al-Junaid, stressed the importance of creativity and innovation in providing technical solutions to some of the issues in the first competition, which uses the capacities of the Benefit Laboratory for Advanced Artificial Intelligence. Inaddition, the Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Dr. Hesham Mohammed Al-Ammal, reviewed the competition objectives and criteria.
During the event – which lasted for four continuous days – a doctoral student at UoB and the European CERN Center, Abdullah Sabah, gave a presentation in which he trained students to deal with parallel computers in the laboratory, and to run software that allows students to build their applications with high efficiency. Afterward, Dr. Al-Ammal gave a presentation on the basics of machine learning and data science, followed by Associate Professor of the Department of Computer Science, Dr. Riadh Mohammed Ksantini, who gave a review on deep machine learning mechanisms and its applications, and how to build deep neural networks.
Moreover, the students participated in a brainstorming session to generate ideas and applications in artificial intelligence that contribute to serving issues and challenges in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The students proposed several ideas for various challenges, including: an application that recognizes local plant epidemics, applications that serve the deaf, applications to predict traffic flow, others to facilitate transportation by public buses, and an application to recognize available car parks. Students presented environmental ideas to take advantage of wasted household food and waste recycling, in addition to cultural applications aimed at introducing traditional Bahraini clothes, simulating the art styles of Bahraini artists, and food care applications for kids.
On the closing day of the competition, the participating teams gave presentations of their completed projects before a jury consisting of specialists from the public and private sectors and some academics. The committee included Dr. Riadh Ksantini, Mohammad Al-Ashiri from The Benefit Company, Lulwa Jassem Malallah from the Information and e-Government Authority, Mohammad Buallay from the Ministry of Finance and National Economy, in addition to PhD student Abdullah Sabah.
It is worth noting that the BENEFIT Lab, which opened on December 23, 2021, is the only one of its kind in the Kingdom of Bahrain, which provides students and researchers at UoB with supercomputing capabilities that facilitate building artificial intelligence applications and advanced data analysis. The Lab was established with generous support from the BENEFIT Board of Directors, and it is currently being used by many students and researchers at UoB.
