Tecnológico de Monterrey among Hackathon winners

The Hackathon is a yearly PLuS Alliance competition featuring international student teams working to address global challenges.

By Jerry Gonzalez |
December 17, 2020

Mexico’s Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM) Sonora Norte Campus was one of five global winners during the ASU-Devex Global Student Hackathon, event organizers announced during the Devex World 2020 conference, Dec. 10.

The hackathon is a yearly PLuS Alliance competition featuring international student teams working to address global challenges. This year, Sarah Jones, Arizona State University's hackathon program lead, arranged a partnership with Devex, a media platform for the global development community based in Washington, D.C.

Paola Garcia Hidalgo, ASU director of Mexico and Latin America initiatives coordinated efforts with the PLuS Alliance and ASU International Development to invite Mexican universities.

ITESM was one of four Mexican universities participating, and won one of the five overall categories: Future of Development Finance. ITESM students Santiago Aguirre, Francisco Celaya and Santiago Lares won the challenge based on U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

“We congratulate our partner Tecnológico de Monterrey and their students for their winning submission for the challenge where they proposed the development of a cash transfer platform to enable people to transfer monies rapidly and securely through a mobile phone app,” Garcia Hidalgo said. “We also want to recognize our Tecnológico colleagues who led the hackathon in their campus, Alejandro Sandoval, Luis Reséndez, Raul Lizarraras and all of Tecnológico’s Entrepreneurship Institute Eugenio Garza Lagüera.”

The hackathon featured 37 teams from 20 countries across six continents, including Australia, Brazil, Georgia, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria, the Philippines and the U.S. The other four winning teams were ASU; De La Salle University in the Philippines; University of São Paulo, Brazil; and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) – Ghana.

Building on the exciting hackathon experience, ASU’s Convergence Lab will host “The Ultimate Student Hack: Saving Tomorrow, Today” at 9 a.m. MST on Jan. 26. The event will bring together students and experts from around the world to discuss how young people can leverage technology to work across borders and disciplines to solve global problems. Registration for the event is ongoing.