A team of six HKUST undergraduates were awarded the First Place in the inaugural Fishackathon held in Hong Kong on April 22-24. Named “Phishing for Good”, the team included Pranesh Balekai, Jainam Mehta (both Electronic and Computer Engineering), Kenta Iwasaki (School of Engineering), Arvind Iyer (Computer Engineering Program), Don Dyu Kim (Mathematics) and Soo-Yeon Seo (Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management).

Their project is an integrated software and hardware solution that helped reduce the economic and environmental impacts of “ghost gear”, which is fishing gear such as nets and traps that were inadvertently lost or disposed of in the sea. As the regional winner in Hong Kong, the team will enter the global competition in June.

The annual Fishackathon is a 48-hour hackathon hosted by the US Department of State since 2014 to congregate brilliant minds for the purpose of developing usable technology solutions to address the problem of worldwide overfishing. The 2016 Fishackathon took place on the Earth Day weekend (April 22-24) in over 40 cities around the world, including in Hong Kong for the first time.

The 2016 Hong Kong Fishackathon was held at the Ocean Park and attracted ten teams, which included working professionals, university students and secondary school students. A cash prize of US$7,000 and a yearlong subscription at a local co-working space were awarded to the winning team by the US Consulate General Hong Kong and Macau in recognition of their achievement.