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The Challenge Contest, initiated by the Bengis Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Ben-Gurion University's Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management (GGFBM), recently held this year's final event at Intel Israel's Haifa offices, marking the end of this cycle, which began in December 2017.
The Challenge is an open innovation platform that enables global organizations to challenge students through applied contests. Beyond the important experience for the students, it also enables Challenger organizations to be exposed to innovative and creative proposals by students from a variety of fields of study. Students team up or go solo to pitch their ideas in a series of events.
This year, Intel Israel challenged students to reimagine the use of data and to submit a product or a service idea that utilizes data to benefit one or more of the following fields: Education, Medicine or Smart/Connected Living or Supply Chain. This Challenge gave students the opportunity to make a huge global impact on society by getting the power of Intel's world-wide operation behind their ideas.
The Challenge was very well-received: 110 teams from 17 different academic institutions submitted ideas. Out of eight finalists, a panel of judges from Intel, BGU and the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, selected four winning teams.
Noy Goldhammer and Lilach Barkat won first place with the "BmyEyes project": a sensor technology for vision-impaired pedestrians based on Intel's autonomous car technology. Through a sensor placed on a belt, the product will warn the user before encountering dangers such as cars, traffic lights, stairs and other obstacles. In addition, the product will act as a navigator; the user will have the option to select a destination and the product will guide him through an unfamiliar area.
Yaron Ardestani, Erez Negawker, Shai Geva, Vitaly Telman and Natanel Shlomi from GGFBM's Department of Business Administration came in second, with their project "Hear U". "Hear U" is an AI system based on Big Data that can accurately and quickly diagnose pneumonia through the sound of patients' breathing without needing to take X-Rays or scans, ultimately saving lives and resources.
Two ventures took third place. The first, Shahar Mazie's "Green Light", is a system of smart, autonomous traffic lights. By placing a system of cameras at intersections, the traffic lights can count cars on different routes and analyze traffic flow in real time through image processing. Using a sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithm, the traffic lights will adapt to the reality on the road. Today, the traffic lights system is dated and static. Predetermined cycles do not adapt to varying loads and are not highly efficient. At any given time, only a few cars pass through a traffic light, often causing major traffic jams. Smart traffic lights solve this problem by adjusting to traffic flow dynamically and in real time.
The second, "Smart Fridge", was proposed by Shani Vertlib. It can warn users before products expire to ensure their consumption, and even send recipes to help them make the most of their products. In addition, after using Smart Fridge for a period, users will receive suggestions on how to improve their purchasing patterns. It is estimated that families essentially throw away NIS 8,808 shekels each year.
Prof. Oded Lowengart, Dean of the GGFBM and Chair of the Bengis Center commented, “This is the second successful Challenge contest. Students from diverse fields team up to create and market their dream start-ups. The ingenuity of the Challenge Competitions attracts major corporations like Intel Israel and Mercedes Israel to tackle the Challenge, support the contest and acquire the latest trailblazing ideas from the great young minds of our students. We invite you to follow our next Challenge in the near future."
The first three places were awarded financial prizes: first place - NIS 12,000, second place - NIS 10,000, third place - NIS 8,000.
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