HS2 Hackathon - Northampton engagement

On 8-9th December 2017 students, and a member of staff, from the University of Northampton's Computing subject area were among the many participants in Transport System Catapult's HS2 Hackathon  https://ts.catapult.org.uk/hs2hackathon/. Looking for solutions to challenges around staff wellbeing, customer experience, maintenance, minimising the negative impact on the communities during construction; as well looking to have a positive impact on local communities.

One team was largely made up of five University of Northampton students from Computing - Platform1. Their idea was the development of an integrated journey planning and booking app for multiple types of transportation; including buses, taxis, cycles, trains for the whole journey. Their goal was a tool ththat helped integrate all of the transport modes through out the journey. Members of the group included Tomas Taujanskas, Mohammed Saif Rahman, Oloruntobi Ayilara, Mahbub Haque, Ismaila Jarboh.

A second team, Gang of Seven, looked at a different problem of the permeability of stations. The issue was around how can a station become a more social space for the community around the station and the travelling users. Three members of the team are part of the University of Northampton - two from Societal Travel CIC / iList and Dr Scott Turner (see below) from the Computing team within the Faculty of Arts, Science and Technology. Other members of the team came from diverse and complementary areas including design, medicine and software engineering from across the UK.

This team was short-list to the next round in February 2018.

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon