APU’s Computer Science Students Emerged Top Winners at Mobile App Hackathon

Two APU teams, Team Alpacaverse and Team Millenia emerged as Top winners at Karuna HackWknd 2021 – mobile application category. The 3 members of each team are in their second-year studies of the Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Computer Science degree with a Specialism in Data Analytics.

Organized by KARUNA (Sarawak) Enterprise, and supported by SDEC Digitalising Sarawak, Sarawak Digital, and MDEC, this competition is a hackathon intended to identify new programming talents and sources for new concepts to build mobile applications that help improve productivity and business processes, especially when it involves working remotely.

Team Alpacaverse comprising Chua Rou Lin, Khor Zhen Win, and Leo Wai Yei, won the 1st Place title with “Inventory Tracking System”; whereas Team Millenia made up of Hoh Shen Yien, Loe Hui Ying, and Chong Rui Jun, secured the 3 rd Place award with the “Millenial GL system”. As a reward, both teams were awarded a cash prize of RM5,000 and RM1,000 respectively, on top of RM2,000 & RM500 worth of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits each.

“We built a system that allows event planning companies to manage and track their inventory’s location and the event they are used in. With features such as the QR code, event templates, reports, and notifications, this application aims to fill the gap between basic spreadsheet software solutions such as Excel and large-scale enterprise inventory management systems,” elaborated Chua Rou Lin, leader of Team Alpacaverse.

The winning team impressed the judges with a working prototype that was built in a native Android environment to demonstrate the concept and the practical application of the inventory tracking system. Besides, the team also presented a viable and marketable business case for the proposed inventory tracking system.

“The hackathon did not focus solely on technical capabilities. The panel of judges also looked at the business acumen of the teams. That gave us the winning edge,” highlighted Rou Lin. 

On the other hand, Team Millenia’s GL System is a clinical mobile application that covers appointment booking, patient & data management, guarantee letter management, and clinic service management. The goal of this application is to provide a user-friendly mobile application to aid patients to make clinical appointments and to help clinics manage their patients' data.

“We have demonstrated innovation and creativity in providing alternatives to solve problem statements. Besides, by using the Java programming language, we managed to build a functional prototype of the system that we proposed. Finally, by using our business knowledge, we presented our ideas and solutions to convince the panel of judges,” explained Hoh Shen Yien, the team leader.

Kudos to the teams for making a mark in Karuna HackWknd, as this was an open hackathon participated not only by undergraduates but also working professionals and startup owners. Their self-initiative and self-motivation even without depending on a mentor, and the competitiveness demonstrated by our APU teams is proof that our students are ready for the real world even before they are graduating.