Computer Networking students represented London Met at 24 hour Cisco innovation challenge.
Date: 14 November 2016
A team of students from London Met’s School of Computing and Digital Media took part in the Cisco University Challenge 2016, placing fourth out of fifteen teams from universities across the UK and Ireland.
This year’s event, which took place on 20 and 21 October, saw over 80 students compete against each other in a 24 hour hackathon.
Focusing on the Internet of Things, which is the internetworking of physical devices, the competition is an opportunity for students to work on real world problems and develop a solution within 24 hours.
The team from London Met included Bartlomiej Beben, Harry Desai, Mohammadreza Shademan and Carleen Tsolu.
They devised an emergency solution that uses solar powered WiFi access points to track individuals’ mobile phones and guide them along safe routes in treacherous terrains. Their system was integrated with Google Maps and included an inbuilt emergency button to give the exact location to rescuers should someone need help.
Dr Shahram Salek Zamankhani, Manager of the Cisco Academy in the School of Computing and Digital Media, said: “I’m very pleased for our students. They showed intellectual maturity to tackle the given problem in a short time. The University has also been recognised by Cisco for providing the best delivery of the CCNP curriculum in Europe. This award was hard earned and we are proud of it.”
Professor Bal Virdee, Director of the Centre for Communications Technology, said: “The Cisco University Challenge tested the students’ analytical and problem solving skills on a real world engineering problem. The competition pushed students’ understanding and knowledge on computer networking and software engineering to the extreme.
“I’m pleased that London Met students’ came up with a credible business strategy and had the creativity to devise a prototype solution within the given time. I’m sure this experience will help them in their future employment.”
