VTT Young professionals organised the 4th HackVTT event in Riihivuori, Jyväskylä in May. The event brought together seventeen VTTers from Espoo, Tampere, Jyväskylä and Oulu to co-create innovative solutions in order to tackle climate change.
On the event, three guest experts presented their area of expertise closely related to the topic of the hackathon. Social scientist Marja Järvelä, a professor from the University of Jyväskylä, gave a presentation on the political aspects of climate change. After Marja's presentation, VTT's principal scientists Maria Antikainen and Matti Tähtinen held the second round of discussions. Antikainen's presentation discussed how to change business into circular and Matti Tähtinen's presentation concerned the future energy.
In the event the participants worked together in smaller groups in order to hack novel solutions for climate change. Each group gave a three-minute pitch at the end of the hack. The presented hack ideas included SmarFF "Smart Floating Forest", E-Children, FURM "Flying Universal Recycle Machine" and Climate Community Application.
SmarFF "Smart Floating Forest" is an island made of reed. The island is built for energy harvesting and mangrove trees that capture CO2 from the air. SmarFF also filters seawater and collects plastic from the sea. The island includes solar panels that produce energy for its needs. SmarFF also utilises AI, GPS and FCST to navigate and avoid collisions and storms.
E-Children will provide electricity for villages in Africa through power parks. The parks create energy by changing children's movement to electricity. The produced energy will be stored in batteries that make it possible to use the produced energy when needed.
FURM "Flying Universal Recycle Machine" makes it possible to store trash on the roofs of cities, releasing street space for other usage. The FURM drone solution then collects waste from the roofs of the buildings. The drone solution can also be used for delivering things.
Climate community is an application that makes it possible for individuals to form climate action communities on a local scale. The application helps people find their nearest climate communities, which share the same interests as themselves. The application then matches the solutions of climate friendly companies with the communities' needs offering them services. The application also calculates the carbon handprint for the communities' actions to measure their positive impact.
All in all, the HackVTT 2019 gave VTT Young Professionals a great place to network with fellow colleagues, to learn new things about climate change, circular economy and energy, and to brainstorm new solutions and project ideas for future.
If you haven't already heard - the VTT Young Professionals are a group of the young and young at heart people at VTT. Our goal is to strike the perfect balance between professional development activities and fun social events so that our activities are both enjoyable for you and beneficial for your career at VTT. We are especially interested in getting new employees and trainees actively involved and quickly feeling at home at VTT.
In addition to running internal events, we are core members of the Finnish Young Professionals (FYP, http://www.finlandyoungprofessionals.fi/) and the Young European Association of Researchers (YEAR, http://www.year-network.com/), and we participate in events both Nationally and across Europe.
