The IAU Office of Astronomy for Development (IAU OAD) is pleased to announce that, together with partners, it will host 13 data science hackathons across 12 countries between February and April 2025. The events will be organised under the OAD’s flagship project, Hack4dev.
Hack4dev is a project under the OAD’s Knowledge and Skills for Development theme. It aims to advance development objectives through the teaching and application of knowledge and skills from astronomy, such as programming, data handling, data analysis and machine learning, as well as infrastructure, such as cloud computing platforms. Hack4dev is a collaboration between the OAD and partners.
The newly announced events will offer participants the opportunity to tackle data challenges using cutting-edge techniques and infrastructure, develop a machine learning pipeline for CubeSats [1], collaborate with peers, and compete against regional teams from around the globe. Participants will access Jupyter development environments [2], using computational resources provided by the ilifu cloud computing system [3] to develop and test solutions.
Hackathons will take place in Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Botswana, South Africa, Madagascar, Rwanda, Namibia, Mozambique, India, Brazil, and Chile. The OAD will directly fund the hackathons in Ethiopia and Chile, and will support the other events through the Hack4dev collaboration.
Postgraduate students and exceptional final-year undergraduates with strong Python programming skills are encouraged to apply for the hackathon nearest to their location. Participants are expected to commute to and from the venue each day of the event.
For more details and registration, please visit https://hack4dev.org/call-dsrh-2025.