Human Brainwave Hackathon

Date: 03.12.2024 Category: General

Neurohackathon – Heroes of the Brain – organised by the Neuron Neuroinformatics Research Club and by the Student Self-Government of the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology is the biggest such event in Poland.

Two days, over 24 hours of work, 132 registered participants, who formed a total of 32 teams competing in two categories – Entertainment and Social Impact. These are just some of the statistics from the Heroes of the Brain hackathon, which took place on 16 and 17 November in the Open Science Zone.

– Considering the specificity of the hackathon and its leading field – neuroinformatics – it is the largest hackathon of this type that has been organized in Poland so far, as well as probably the largest hackathon of this type in Europe – says Katarzyna Białas, PhD student from the Department of Applied Computer Science, supervisor of the Neuron club.

She adds that the primary goal of this event was to bring brain-computer interface technology to a wide audience and increase the awareness of the benefits that this technology can bring, especially in medicine, rehabilitation or human-computer interaction.

Heroes of the Brain is an international event, the registered teams came from Poland and neighbouring countries. The event was opened among others with a lecture by a special guest and jury member – Dr. Osvaldas Putkis – Head of Engineering at the Lithuanian company Neurotechnology, which produces brain-computer interfaces BrainAccess. He presented a theoretical introduction to working in projects with EEG headbands and caps – 4-channel Halo and 8-channel BrainAccess Mini.

The lecture was followed by the demonstration of hyperscanning – an imaging technique consisting in simultaneous recording of brain activity of many people involved in a common social interaction.

– After successfully connecting the equipment, it was possible to connect 9 people simultaneously and make some sort of an „orchestra". The participants' brainwaves created the sounds of music – says Katarzyna Białas. – The event was innovative on a global scale. We do not have an officially established Guinness record, but so far, hyperscanning sessions described in the literature have mostly taken place in groups of 2–3 people. We can risk saying that we are making history at WUST :)

The teams presented, among others, a tool enabling disabled people to navigate websites by detecting the direction of eye movement, a personalized tool for optimal waking from sleep and effective rest, a concept of a bionic prosthesis control system, or applications supporting productivity using the Pomodoro technique and measuring selected brainwave ranges.

The hackathon also resulted in many interesting game and application concepts combining art and neuroscience, e.g. visualization of thought potentials in the form of fractals, brain-controlled chess or the winning project of the game BrainSurfer, in which the player's competition with one's own thoughts and with oneself is presented in the form of an action game: as a surfer trying to stay on the wave generated by the user's normalized thought potentials.

The jury composed of: Prof. Adrianna Kozierkiewicz from the Department of Applied Computer Science, Dr. Osvaldas Putkis (BrainAccess), Dr. Mariusz Dzieciątko (prize sponsor – the company COIG S.A.) and Katarzyna Białas, M.Sc. chose winners in each category.

The Social Impact category
1st place – 5 000 pln – SAGRES
2nd place – 2 000 pln – SleepQueens
3 rd place – 1 000 pln – Mirki

The Entertainment category
1st place – 5 000 pln – Brain Surfers
2nd place – 2 000 pln – 4Sigma
3rd place – 1 000 pln – Szarak i Spółka

– The Hackathon turned out to be a huge success and was positively evaluated by both the participants and the jury members. This is the first such a large event organized by the Neuron club and the result of almost half a year of planning and preparation – adds Katarzyna Białas, M.Sc. And she promises: – We will be applying to be chosen as a strategic club in the nearest competition, so that we will be able to offer such initiatives on an even larger scale.