Avi Soclof, a graduate of the Fuchs Mizrachi School in Beachwood, recently co-created a search engine for an Israeli NGO at the Jerusalem College of Technology Men’s Hackathon.
As part of the JCT international student team including Yaakov Elfassy from Monsey, NY, Yishai Dredzen from Johannesburg, South Africa, and Eli Hawk from Woodmere, NY, Soclof co-created a new search engine in line for Toldot Yisrael, an Israeli NGO that captures the stories of Jews who came to Israel before 1948.
They created a mechanism to search for specific words mentioned in historical Toldot Yisrael interviews that capture the stories of those who lived through the founding of the State of Israel. The mechanism allows people to search for any word embedded in any interview, allowing users to search their database of 4,000 hours of video interviews efficiently, according to a press release.
Scolof, a computer science student in the college’s International English program, praised the intensity of the hackathon which allowed him to “master new technologies and pushed me to learn more and enroll in extracurricular activities outside of the University. For example, I took the initiative to enroll in a course on how to build a website from scratch,” he said in the statement.
The hackathon is hosted by JCT’s LevTech Entrepreneurship Center, which also includes a pre-accelerator program to help students turn their ideas into products and start-ups. More than 100 Orthodox and
Israeli and international students from the ultra-Orthodox College of Technology in Jerusalem participated in the hackathon, working on challenges presented by companies including Intel, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Medtronic, SpotReality, Toldot Yisrael and the Israel Police.
“All of the students who participated in the hackathon were amazing and showed tremendous effort and creativity,” Orlee Guttman, co-founder of the LevTech Entrepreneurship Center, said in the statement. “They learned new technologies within hours and then created new products using them. As we’ve seen over the past few years, their innovation and drive also continues after the hackathon, as they strive to bring these products to market, improve consumer experience and business efficiency, and contribute often saving lives at the same time.
The winners were selected by nine judges from Israeli and international companies. First place went to the team behind Wi-Find, an easy-to-use solution using inexpensive components that can retrieve data from signals around it, in places where GPS and Bluetooth cannot be used. . They developed a way to process information and map the exact location of any object. The uses for this technology are endless, especially in places with vital and/or expensive mobile equipment, such as hospitals, construction sites, etc.
“Usually it takes participants about a week to create working demos at a hackathon. Seeing the level of demos these students built in just 48 hours, and the creativity and innovation that came with it, was truly unique,” said Tomer Simon, chief scientist at Microsoft Israel R&D Center and hackathon judge. . The version. “The energy from the students was amazing, and it was great to see the challenge-based format that connected the students to business, helping them prepare for real challenges in the business world. In the together the level of implementation and self-study was enormous and the students’ thirst for self-improvement was evident.”