Expleo, a global engineering, technology and consulting service provider, today announces that it will invest €2M in an accelerator for team-led innovations and technologies that address the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs). The company’s annual hackathon in Ireland will determine which projects receive funding.
Expleo’s hackathon – launched in 2020 - has become a cornerstone of Expleo’s ability to consistently bring industry-leading innovations to businesses in Ireland and across the globe. To support innovation, participants are equipped with the latest generative AI technologies and software development tools, along with comprehensive tutorials, hands-on training sessions and mentorship. All solutions are aligned with at least one UNSDG.
Over the next two years, Expleo will invest €2M in sustainable solutions and other innovative ideas that are chosen for the accelerator. The investment will include deploying dedicated teams to develop the ideas and bring them to market, as well as understanding their sustainability impact, social benefit, and true market opportunity.
Safe Hubs: providing peace of mind at night
The winning solution at last year's hackathon was ‘Safe Hubs,’ a mobile app that can be used any time a person feels vulnerable walking or travelling on their own, usually at nighttime.
Expleo deployed a team of experts to develop the solution and partnered with University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland's largest university, on a pilot to improve campus safety. The app enabled users to provide visibility and live tracking of their whereabouts to campus security and automatically alerted security if there were any unexpected changes to their movements. Following the successful UCD pilot, Expleo will trial and pilot Safe Hubs in Dublin, with the aim of extending it to all urban areas and communities in the future.
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Brian Kennedy, Head of Digital & Innovation, Expleo, said: “On the back of our success in coming up with ideas and then solutions that address issues in areas such as cybersecurity, health and personal safety, our Innovation Accelerator underlines our commitment to investing in sustainable solutions for people and our planet. We firmly believe that by collaborating and pooling our resources, we can find innovative solutions to address critical problems. Whether it's developing new green technologies, supporting sustainable agriculture, or promoting responsible consumption, at Expleo, we are driving positive change in the name of sustainability and the UNSDGs.
“Our Innovation Accelerator is a fantastic opportunity for Expleo team members to collaborate, be creative, propose and then build innovative solutions to real-world challenges. Incredible ideas emerge when diverse perspectives come together. We hope that this Innovation Accelerator will not only stimulate new ideas and products but also foster collaboration within our functions and services. The Accelerator, along with events such as our annual hackathon, encourage participants from different areas and skillsets to approach problem-solving with a fresh human-centric mindset. They are given the freedom to prototype rapidly using start-up principles, while also trialling new experimental approaches to solving client, sector, and wider societal challenges.”
A previous winning entry in Expleo’s hackathon was ‘ExpleoProtectUS,’ a world-first cybersecurity tool specifically designed to thwart SMS phishing attacks. It was recently launched as part of a new security feature within the PTSB mobile banking app, ‘PTSB Protect’.
Source: Written from press release
